
Class '.: - 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSITV 



Happiness and Continuous 
Personality 



OR 



Life's Purposive Appearance 

By 
S. F.'SHOREY 

Author of 

"The Greater Men and Women, as Factors 
of Human Progress" 

"Human Harmonies and the Art of Making Them" 

"Injustice and National Decay" 

"Human Progress and Party Functions" 

"What Life Seems to Me, or Continuous Personality 
and Social Evolution" 



Published by 

S. F. SHOREY, Seattle, Wash. 

January, 1919 



Copyrighted January, 1919 

By 

S. F. Shorey 



m 20 f319 



CALVERT-CALHOUN PRINTING CO. 
SEATTLE 

©a.A5L1604 



-^^^^ 



6 



THE PROMISE KEPT 
An Introduction 

nAPPINESS and Continuous Personality, or 
Life's Purposive Appearance/' is offered 
in fulfillment of the promise made to the readers 
of *'What Life Seems to Me/' at the end of that 
little volume; and is, as a matter of fact, a con- 
tinuation — as a second half — of the subject matter 
of the first published booklet, which was more than 
half completed when the first was published. 

Had the second part been included in the first, 
however, the book could not have been kept down 
to convenient pocket size if printed in large, read- 
able type, and sold for twenty-five cents in paper 
covers. 

Comparatively few, even when they have the 
means, buy high priced books; nor, when secured, 
do many find time to wade through them; hence 
most of our deluge of ponderous volumes, even in 
cases where the thought matter is high and the 
expression most excellent, has but a small percent- 
age of educational value. 

The bringing out . of this continuation has been 
very greatly encouraged by the liberal response 
with which "What Life Seems to Me" has met 

—3— 



from the purchasing and reading public^ as well 
as the satisfaction expressed, combined with the 
call for the second part as promised. 

Since the publication of the first — now more 
than a year — the second has been in process of 
revision and addition with a trifle of attention each 
day. For in his daily contact with commenting 
readers of the first the writer learned much of 
what was further needed. 

As^ also^ in "What Life Seems to Me/' effort has 
herein been made to offer some rational and prac- 
tical philosophy of life^ without dogma. 

In the following table of contents effort^ also, has 
been made to convey to the reader some idea of the 
subject matter^ a few hints or suggestions. Conse- 
quently the table of contents had better be read 
before going on with the reading of the book. 



>-4-_- 



CONTENTS 
Evolution, or the Way of Progress 

The awakening consciousness. 

The evolution of the unfolding concept among 
men. 

The progress of inductive reasoning — or think- 
ing from effect to cause. 

Climaxes of growth; or^ epoch-posts of progress. 

Spencer and Darwin among the great interpret- 
ers. 

Suffering an indispensable factor of involuntary 
progress. 

Education an indispensable factor of voluntary 
progress. 
Progress; Its Cause — Change or Life.^ 

Inaccuracy of knowledge and expression. 

Figurative language, indefiniteness in cause as- 
signing. 

Progress ; is it due to change or to the cause of 
change ? 

Cause — to what form of agency due, inert or 
active, static or dynamic.^ 

A practical philosophy of life. 

How much of the unknown is knowable? 

Our invasions of the unknown, by admittance, 
invitation and compulsion. 

—5 — 



The Educational Value of 
Destruction and Suffering 

Struggle the central requirement of survival. 
The animal or brute plane of struggle. 
The human plane and moral evolution. 
Spurs to human betterment enumerated. 
Rebuilding change and the meaning of today s 

tumult. 
Brutal factors of human progress. 
Schools and honest political economy. 
Education^ perpetual peace and youthful civiliza- 
tion. 
**Equal rights to all and special privileges to 

none^'* its moral effect. 
The Unfinished Job of Things 

Science and its interpretations of life. 
Philosophy and its interpretations of life. 
Anticipation and enjoyment of possession. 
Wane of interest and the awakening of new 

desires. 
Experience and the segregation of conduct into 

good and bad. 
The unknown and its gradual invasion. 
The conduct of life, within range of human will 

and beyond. 
A review of the onward move, with its unfinished 

job of things. 

—6— 



Nature^s Interpreters 

Our arrival in life and gradual awakening. 

Understanding of things seen and felt. 

The best interpretations confined to the most 
awakened. 

Many see but few catch the meaning. 

The keenest of sight and the dullest of under- 
standing. 

The evidence of continuous personality in life's 
process. 

The why of many things and movements — an 
inquiry. 

The great interpretations of science but little of 
its possibility. 

An inference — life's move in response to some 
purpose. 

The passing show considered; its meaning? 
Matter, Energy, and Personality 

Matter, its embodying and re-embodying possi- 
bilities. 

Matter and energy in the light of science. 

The many planes of matter. 

Has our sense limit any purpose to serve? If 
so, what? 

Other planes of matter, what their purpose? 

Prejudice and the meaning of change to new 
opportunities. 

—7— 



Progress Casting Off Its Dead 

Social evolution, subserving individual evolution. 

Present human conduct, largely determined be- 
hind the scenes. 

Free will and voluntary conduct in progress. 

Breaking up static conditions — casting off the 
dead. 

The destructive half of progress and the devil. 

Our lures and compulsions, their meaning. 

Old age a concretion or form of prejudice. 

The change called death a breaking away from 
foolishness. 

Human evolution when observed from the lowest 
to the highest. 
What, Then, Matters Destruction.^ 

Strength gained through the difficulty of the way. 

Life a laboratory or industrial school. 

For all this struggle, what remains as a product ? 

Man, building of himself, a higher product than 
that which he builds in other lines. 

This view and the better understanding of war. 

A view that makes life somewhat understandable. 

The mobilized experiences of men, its value. 

War, its purposes. The avowed and human, the 
cosmic and real. 

The evolutionary activity of the cosmic mind. 

Human blindness in this ferment of progress. 

—8— 



EVOLUTION, OR THE WAY OF PROGRESS 
^Y^^RESENT conditions and events are the ef-^ 
ls^<r fects of causes, many of which were set up 
in the long ago, and the steps leading up to some 
of these may be traced back through history. 

Without having gone back to primitive human 
conditions and traced individual and social unfold- 
ment through much of the available means of know- 
ing, including history, little or no understanding of 
present day conditions and happenings can be had. 

To read the history of civilization is but to 
follow the pathway of unfolding ideas. Contempla- 
tive persons alone in thinking of an event give 
much thought to the evolving preparation, or idea- 
awakening process, reaching back as it usually 
does through the centuries by which most discov- 
eries, most inventions, most revolutions, most wars, 
most improvement in living, as well as most of the 
originalities of men are in the preparatory sense 
preceded. 

All improving changes are made by men as the 
sphere of their consciousness expands to include 
an ever greater number of facts, a larger knowl- 
edge of life's kinships, and a consciousness of its 
continuous move into forms better fitted to serve 
its progressive needs. 

—9— 



This expanding consciousness appears as im- 
provement in matters of the every day life^ also 
in art^ and particularly so in science^ in invention^ 
in discovery and a better interpretation of the 
meaning of facts as they are discovered. It ap- 
pears as increase of power and means to construct^ 
to re-construct^ and to do so with ever greater 
ease and accuracy^ and gradually to a realization 
among men of the fact of the inclusiveness of this 
change^ in that it extends to all human expression. 

Mental unfoldment proceeds in a series of dis- 
coveries and inventions made up for the most part 
of items common to all minds^ and for the less part 
of the z^wcommon^ among which are found the more 
conspicuous; the expressions of men standing out 
among the common in contrasts so well marked as 
to name periods of progress. 

This is the part of accomplishment commonly 
seen^ the resultant, the culmination, the striking 
effect reached by the action of the process, the 
epoch-stone that marks a period of human unfold- 
ment. 

In thinking of the discovery of America com- 
paratively few ever go far back in history and 
trace the unfolding concept down to the culminated 
fact or executive expression which took place 
through the efforts of the one man, Columbus. 

— 10— 



From one viewpoint Columbus came and cap- 
tured great credit for reaping the harvest of cen- 
turies of the preparatory process^ herein acting 
instrumentally or as an effect. From this view- 
point we are inclined to ask^ would he have been 
able to walk away with the spoils of credit had he 
arrived sooner or later? Was his arrival an oppor- 
tune one? Did he reach the scene of his victory 
at precisely the right time — a time when the pre- 
paratory process had ripened the opportunity to 
the point of plucking? 

Anyhow^ we must admit the preparatory process ; 
and all leaders of thought and of action may be 
recognized as those who appear upon the scene of 
their accomplishments as the right men at the 
right time; as the ones who come with sufficient 
'Spins'' of will and intelligence to climax the pre- 
paratory process. But each appears evidently as 
a cause as well as an effect^ as that which acts as 
well as that which is acted upon^ as the man^ but 
not necessarily the only man. 

We know that the era-posts of progress are set 
up by leaders at what seems to be about the right 
time and place and they appear to act as effects 
to the extent that they lack initiative, and as causes 
in so far as they have initiative. 

The fact of the unfolding process, if philosoph- 

—11— 



ically^ scientifically^ and historically traced^ is 
found to have dawned upon the minds of men but 
slowly — came through the evolving process of an 
idea — was discovered in fragments^ as the horizon 
of consciousness^ through the occasional man^ at 
wide apart intervals of time^ rose and receded into 
broader vistas of life. 

Human personality unfolds through three dy- 
namic phases or divisions^ appearing in consecutive 
order and may be loosely defined as follows: 
The first of the three is made up of the proclivity 
or natural tendency^ the aspiration^ with which 
we all appear in life; the second is gained by 
experience^ apart from education^ properly so 
called; the third phase^ the educational or cultivat- 
ed tendency^ the latest to appear in the upward- 
climb series and but fairly well begun^ is by far 
the most important for present consideration. 

For in its latency is concealed the power that is 
to transform the world of men and their appur- 
tenances ; the means by which they are to change, 
and be changed^ from greedy^ ^J^^E? dishonest, 
thieving, fighting savages into reliable, civilized, 
happy human beings. 

Education is a process evolving into ever greater 
voluntary control — a higher line of naturalness. 

—12— 



The move increases in rapidity as fast as men 
awaken to its possibilities. 

Could the means, now wasted and destroyed by 
ignorance in two generations of time, be educa- 
tionally applied, it would abolish warfare and 
establish so large a measure of justice in the world 
as to bring the happiness of which men have long 
been dreaming. 

The process of building up the inheritance factor 
of man through the experiences w^hich brought him 
to the beginning of a rational being, must have 
taken, humanly speaking, an incalculable length of 
time; and, following that beginning, the ages upon 
ages consumed in evolving our product of thought, 
as embodied in our present equipment of semi-civil 
life is equally inconceivable. 

To the awakening person present human prog- 
ress seems a slow process, but the impatience hereat 
may be due, not so much to its being a fact as to 
the imperfections revealed to the unfolding mind, 
combined with the failure to grasp the tremendous- 
ness of duration. For, the present move of the 
improving process is, evidently, when compared 
with the move during former ages, a very rapid one. 

Progress seems now to be hurrying men forward 
from the involuntary stage of life to the voluntary, 
by injecting ever greater action and suffering into 

—13— 



the process. The time of a thousand years^ which 
seems to us a space so very long, could not have 
been more than a very small part of the time taken 
by Nature to bring man up to this beginning of 
voluntary control of movement. 

Consequently improvement arrives through a 
process seemingly slow in its movement, and it will 
continue to do so to the extent that it is allowed to 
loiter through educational neglect — the seeming 
slowness is, in itself, a forward urge. 

Free action of the human will, so far, is but a 
trifle more than a theory. All along the way, 
down through the ages, men have acted with but 
little actual consciousness of what they were doing. 

The discovery of the lam — not the cause — of 
progress is of too recent a date to find its way into 
general understanding with sufficient clearness to 
become educationally practical. 

The discovery, however, marks the beginning of 
a new era, ushers in an age of the evolution of 
voluntary improvement along all lines of life. 

The law of unfolding life was not discovered all 
at once and in a day! neither was it discovered 
wholly by any one man or any two men, and during 
the time of a single century or less. It has been a 
matter of unfolding growth. In fact, the majority 
of men have not even yet made the discovery. 

—14— 



The concept as it exists in the minds of the best 
understanding of today has been gradually dawning 
upon men^ or evolving in the minds of men during 
ages; and through the expansion of human con- 
sciousness in response to material contacts — for^ 
consciousness appears to gradually feel its way out 
as the light of facts feels its way in. 

The growing consciousness of the fact of unfold- 
ing life has been a slowly working process ; the 
truth must have been glimpsed just a little at a 
time^ and had its rise much father back than is now 
ordinarily realized. Some man, by being better 
equipped mentally than most men, caught a glimpse 
of the truth and was then followed at a distance 
of time more or less remote thereafter by another, 
who saw and added a trifle more to the concept. 
In time there came another and still another, trail- 
ing down the ages; each seeing a few more of the 
facts in the case and interpreting a little more of 
their meaning. 

The ascending line of the expanding concept 
leading up to our present place of arrival in under- 
standing has been gradual; a pioneering process, 
resulting in a cumulation of discovery and interpre- 
tation made by a series of thinking men, each of 
whom began practically where his predecessor left 
off. 

—15— 



The concept is still expanding and reaching out 
into the practical lives of men. But recently has 
it come to be understood that its pathway can be 
traced through the history of civilization in the 
evolution of human intelligence. 

Great discoveries^ and of the meaning of life and 
form^ great interpretations, may be much more 
common than we realize^ but credit herefor can be 
gained by those alone who are able to appreciate 
what they discover^ express and place it on record 
for others. They must^ also since most new ideas 
meet with general disapproval^ have the courage to 
announce what they learn to be true. 

In this upward struggle of life the great maj ority 
seem to be for the most part fated to act — that is, 
they act instrumentally, and, for the reason, it may 
be believed, that they are not yet unfoldingly 
equipped with sufficient knowledge, will, and cour- 
age to set up much selective or initiative action. 

If, for instance, our Great World Drama of the 
present time be taken as a case in point: It seems 
to be a tragedy of pre-determination ; a play of life, 
the cause of which, men who should have seen, we 
think, did not see with sufficient clearness to 
remove. 

So far, as a matter of fact, men have not gained 
sufficient knowledge and power of united action to 
prevent these world tragedies. 
—16— 



The ideal of antagonistic interests still holds 
sway and determines the conduct of life, from the 
individual on up through groups of men to the 
nation; the opposite ideal, the one of mutual in- 
terests, is in the incipient stage of its development. 

The gain of will power to act with ever greater 
freedom and in larger ways — as by assisting in the 
process of bettering change — follows in the path- 
way of increasing knowledge. 

Consequently, the line which divides what men 
are driven to do from what they select to do, is 
forever in motion and cannot be definitely located. 

In this brief consideration of the evolution of 
the evolving concept we come down to a time just 
before the middle of the last century to find Her- 
bert Spencer giving to the matter a tremendous 
impetus. 

Spencer discovered change to be acting in obedi- 
ence to a constructive law constituting a process 
that began organizing forms with simple unorgan- 
ized matter — a process that for untold ages has 
been unfolding and that is still unfolding the forms 
of life into ever greater complexity of structure, 
and his formulated expression of the action of the 
process stands, ''From the homogeneous to the 
heterogeneous, or from the simple to the complex." 

That which others had seen but dimly and in 
a fragmentary way Spencer saw to be a working 
—17— 



process so all-embracing in its scope as to cover, 
not alone the field of organic evolution, including 
man with all below man, but the entire field of 
visible expression. 

No one previous to the time of Spencer had 
achieved so broad a generalization; none before 
Spencer's time had discovered that the action of 
the process which brought the animal and man into 
existence is the one now used by man to effect his 
growing complexity of expression, voluntary and 
involuntary. 

Charles Darwin, a contemporary of Spencer, 
gave to the world, but a few years later, a more 
specific installment of evolution — a form then very 
much needed, and that is still much needed by the 
world. 

By confining himself to organic evolution, Dar- 
win covered a far narrower field than the one cov- 
ered by Herbert Spencer, by being more specific 
his work came to be better and more quickly under- 
stood; by including man, it at once aroused human 
interest; and, from those whose distinctly different 
theory of human origin had intrenched in defense 
of both their prejudices and selfish interests, it 
aroused also strong opposition, and sank through 
the feelings much more quickly, deeply and last- 
ingly into the human mind. 

—18— 



Darwin's theory of human origin was considered 
by most men at the time of its announcement to be, 
and is still believed by many to be, no more than a 
theory; and, felt to be an insult to their forefathers. 
In consequence of their hurt feelings they can not 
come quickly to learn what Darwin taught. 

Education hurts when forced on man; it is, also, 
expensive when thus taken; for the involuntary 
process involves the breaking up of old forms, cus- 
toms and prejudices too long retained. Darwin 
came as a thought-compelling, prejudice-breaking 
educator ; and, of course, his great gift to men hurt 
and still hurts in the taking. 

It began at once, however, to create an impres- 
sion among men as being true in the main; and is 
still engaged in this convincing process. Though 
too evidently true to be logically and easily denied, 
it hurt too much to be quickly acknowledged by the 
prejudice-embalmed unread, fear-impressed many. 
Consequently, it was at first accepted by few, the 
best thinkers only. 

The awakening shock, however, which it gave the 
world is still in operation, hurting and angering 
men, who can be made to think in no other way. 

Practically speaking, what matters it whether 
man has evolved as a higher branch of the lower 

—19— 



animals^ or up through lower forms of separate or 
human form of creation ? Why^ then^ not defer the 
fight until more has been learned? 

This evolutionary process which the researcher 
finds now at work to produce ever higher forms of 
life and action^ he finds to have been doing the same 
thing as far back as he has been able to wend his 
way in evidence. This fact some are yet unable to 
understand^ through no faulty so far as we can see^ 
of their own ; others remain among the old order of 
men because of their inertia^ fear^ and prejudice; 
particularly are they held back by prejudices of 
religion; and^ so firmly is the latter implanted in 
the minds of men and women during the plastic 
years of childhood^ that it holds^ through the feel- 
ings^ the mental fort against the invasion of proof 
in the hands of reason. 

Men are not prevented from learning because 
they lack calibre so much as because they lack de- 
sire^ energy^ courage^ will and reason to break the 
bondage of prejudice and use what calibre they 
have. 

We have not yet progressed beyond the place 
where our most rapid improvement takes place at 
times when we are hurt most; the most active ele- 
ment in the evolution of good road building is the 
shock of the accident. 

—20— 



If ignorance brought no inconvenience, no dis- 
aster^ educational institutions would never arise. 
Prejudice^ fixed habits^ safeguard ignorance or the 
**stand-pat" in life; nearly perfect examples of 
which are the lower animals. 

As the animal man merges into the thinking man 
his habits and prejudices become less fixed^ are 
increasingly broken and changed as the increase in 
strength of will^ knowledge and ability to reason 
takes place. Here^ through a higher form of nat- 
ural selection — the voluntary form — control sets in^ 
till in time mastery and use of habit will be 
achieved^ with prejudice left behind among the 
things unfitted to survive. 

It is very evident that neither individual nor 
social improvement can be initiated by and insti- 
tuted among men faster than they awaken to its 
possibilities and importance. 

To bring this awakening to the beginning of 
initiative action must have taken ages^ during which 
time but little more voluntary effort was exercised 
on the part of man than we now find taking place 
in the lives of the lower animals ; and even today 
the awakening process moves on through a seem- 
ingly endles series of shocks and sufferings^ most 
of which will not take place when^ through the 
evolutionary rise in the average of human intelli- 

—21— 



gence^ men have learned to use as much money in 
educational awakening as in fighting. 

Education^ however^ is slowly moving into recog- 
nized importance — is evolving toward (though far 
from having reached) a full-fledged^ voluntary stage 
of action. So far^ but Utile use of voluntary effort 
has been learned; consequently^ in most human 
acts the process takes the initiative and leads — ^in 
other words^ men are made to act^ not so much 
through their intelligence as through their feelings. 

The lower animals are guided by their feelings 
alone^ or instinctively — they have no alternative, 
but man is being driven out of the fenced-in spaces, 
or pastures of life. 

When to the above reason, why men do not 
think more and improve more rapidly, are added 
the ones of a struggle for subsistence and the com- 
mon dislike of effort, or laziness, the why of the 
back-number, and its blood-spilling resultant, be- 
comes plain. Self-evident truths, even, are long 
in finding their way into the practical lives of men. 
Since the conduct of life is determined, not by 
reason, but by the feelings, and the feelings are 
due to prejudice. Nature has implanted form de- 
struction in the unfolding process as a means of 
release from the old slaveries of life. 

Being driven out of prejudice-ruts in order to 

—22— 



go on progressively, explains life's equipment of 
shocks, destruction and suffering; explains the hero 
and the villain in the play of life; the devil and 
the angel in religion; the need of hills and valleys, 
of lights and shadows, the variety of form and 
movement vrith which life has been equipped. 

The evolution of the unfolding concept in the 
minds of men is still in process, expanding, enlarg- 
ing, and invading more attenuated fields of matter ; 
but the battle between its full acceptance and the 
laziness, prejudices and greed of men; the battle 
which all practical acceptance of truth, even of its 
discovery, is obliged to fight is on, and very much 
in evidence. 

The idea of evolution, as extended by Herbert 
Spencer, covers a far broader field than the one 
of organic evolution — that to which Darwin gave 
expression. 

As extended and defined by Spencer, unfoldment 
"from the simple to the complex,'' it covers the 
entire field of material and mental change; not 
only all life below man, but the one covered by 
man with all his multiform expression; it includes 
the alphabet, words, language, books, writing, eco- 
nomics, politics, social forms, machinery, farming, 
education; in fact, everything in which we find 
change and rebuilding change. 

—23— 



Before us may be seen innumerable living and 
acting forms; the difference in these forms^ evi- 
dently^ is due to the difference in the ways by 
which consciousness arrives^ comes to awaken as it 
feels its way into matter; or to the way^ it may be 
said^ the form-building takes place^ as contact calls 
consciousness into action. If human variation takes 
place through consciousness awakened by contacts, 
it takes place also through the difference in the 
wuys different individuals meet and respond to 
their contacts. 

That is, the elements of impulse, instinct, per- 
sonal deviation, — in a word, the element of human 
life, comes in for consideration, manifesting as 
intelligence and will. 

Out of this action of mind on matter and the 
reaction of matter on mind, variety of life and 
form come into visibility, innumerable grades of 
consciousness appear upon the stage, create and 
take part in a turmoil of life. 

Many of these participants are found to be con- 
scious of few facts ; others, few in number, are 
equipped with a larger consciousness of both facts 
and of the relationships existing among these facts 
— men having a very great power of generalization 
and, in consequence hereof, act as educational 

—24— 



creators, as leaders of thought and of men, or men 
but little awakened, feeble generalizers. 

While the matter of education is the stored fruit- 
age of human progress, and its use the shortest 
road we know to greater awareness and larger con- 
cepts of life and living, comparatively few, in any 
high sense, are herewith equipped, for the art of its 
application is in process of evolution. 

The way most men view life is due much less 
to a rational examination of the facts of life than 
to their educationally imposed psychology. Await- 
ing then the arrival of a better art of education, 
the majority will be found working by recipes 
rather than by principles ; living, lying, shirking, 
and fighting, in the world of specifics. 

In awakening to a consciousness of the fact of 
unfolding life, the many follow in the wake of 
their advance guards — the ideal-givers, the few who 
succeed in reaching a more complex and therefore 
larger and higher form of consciousness and of 
expression than the many by whom they are sur- 
rounded. Consequently, it is well for impatient 
reformers to realize that from the rise or incep- 
tion of an ideal to the time of its practice among 
men, ages may pass away. Nature works her 
unfolding change with abundance of time and end- 
less persistence. 

—25— 



So far does this slowness of learning underyling 
principles (individual and social) hold true^ that 
with all the countless forms of effort made bj 
Nature to this end^ with specific repetitions in end- 
less succession emphasized by suffering, to teach 
a few plain and simple fundamentals; so slow do 
we find the move to be, that even yet to the 
significance hereof, to the full educational import 
of this moving picture of ascending change, we are 
but fragmentarily awakened; in fact, the awaken- 
ing seems to be but well begun. 

And so does it hold true of life and all of its 
pertainings; men, women, and things; human 
beings are unfolding, but so far nobody has more 
than a vague understanding of anybody or of 
anything. 

Life seems to be engaged in the effort of unfold- 
ing specific cases, carving out individuals in the 
human form having greater wisdom and greater 
power of executive will. 

The occasional man awakens to some of the 
deeper meaning of life that lies back of appear- 
ances, and finds himself able to explain it with a 
fair amount of satisfaction to others. Consequently, 
the few have a very practical understanding of the 
many, while the many have little or no understand- 
ing of the few. 

—26— 



The animating principles in this great evolving 
d ama of Life are two in number^ corresponding 
io the hero and the villain in the play ; and the 
greater the contrast or difference that lies between 
them^ the more expensive and animated does the 
action that takes place become^ the greater the din 
set up and the faster do men move along the upward 
way. 

Even though we may believe to the contrary, 
progress presents with each staging a radical 
change of scenery and character; consequently, it 
is an error to suppose that "history repeats itself.*' 

At no time within historical ages has the con- 
trast between the hero and the villain in the play 
of Life been so great as in the one of our present 
staging; consequently, never before one in which 
the move was so animated, the noise and the cost 
so great ; and one, we may well believe, from which 
so great a resultant will be realized. 

It seems, however, one with which men have 
little to do, one in which the drama is improving 
men far more than men are improving the drama; 
one which is being produced at far too great an 
expense of life, treasure, and suffering. 

For it is impossible to reflect hereon without 
concluding that, had the average intelligence and 
honesty of the world been sufiiciently high in the 

—27— 



year 1885 to have raised and expended in honest 
education one-half of the money wasted in the 
Great War^ the war would not have taken place. 
What but war could have happened to stimulate the 
raising of this amount? 

Will war^ then^ be necessary as an awakener 
when men have learned to awaken themselves with 
education — will it then be possible? Even when 
so simple a thing as an honest political economy is 
taught in all our public schools^ and as a conse- 
quence^ an honest banking and land system set up 
and operated^ will it be possible? 

Buty evidently^ men are not yet deservingly 
ready^ the laziness and greed which prevent them 
from making ready must be thrown off by suffering. 



—28- 



PROGRESS— ITS CAUSE: CHANGE 
OR LIFE? 

XN MUCH of our everyday communications 
listeners are obliged to guess what the 
speaker means to say by what he aims to say. 

Inaccuracy of knowledge makes accuracy of ex- 
pression difficult. 

For convenience we are obliged to use figurative 
speech in a large part of our efforts to convey 
understanding; this is legitimate when legitimately 
used; but we pay too little attention to accuracy 
of thought and of expression in any form. In 
assigning cause, to speak of a boulder on a railroad 
track as the cause of the accident which took place 
instead of the force of gravity which pulled the 
boulder from the mountain side^ is legitimate by 
reason of its convenience. But to speak of "change'' 
as the cause of progress does not seem to be 
equally so; for in this use we have stepped out into 
the field of philosophy^ where more care should 
be taken. 

In the matter of change and progress, progress 
appears as change takes place, but does this fact 
make it legitimate to conclude that change is the 
cause and progress the effect? 

Philosophically and scientifically, is it legiti- 

—29— 



mate to speak or write of any appearance, of any- 
thing having sense tangibility, as a cause of any- 
thing ? For only to the extent that the visible holds 
within itself invisible power, dynamic, vital or in- 
telligent, can it act, and by acting, become the 
visible instrumentality of some cause within or 
back of its visible form. 

We are made aware of "progress' by the appear- 
ance of a bettering change. This change accompa- 
nies all progress, but even though as an immediate 
antecedent, is it, for this reason, necessarily the 
cause of progress? Are we not impelled by our 
own dissatisfaction to look for the cause of change? 

Does not the cause factor of change reside with- 
in, or back of that in which we see change taking 
place, and is not this factor the cause of the change 
we call progress? 

Is not the cause of progress some form of 
power; an active, initiative, introductive, inaugura- 
tive factor ? And is it too much to assume it to be 
life, evolving life, life moving into ever more intel- 
ligently acting forms of life, and improving change? 
Is not change merely the evidence of the existence 
of that which produces change; evidence of a con- 
cealed but active factor? 

To assume, even, that change is the cause of 
progress and life a property of matter, does not 

—80— 



in the light of modern research, seem to be a 
highly rational proceeding. 

But since most science and philosophy are 
obliged to rest their conclusions upon inferential 
foundations, can one go much farther astray in 
giving to life the credit of being the cause of prog- 
ress, and Cosmic life the cause of terrestial life, as 
well as of universal change? 

For is not life quite as evident a fact as the 
more tangible matter through which it becomes 
obvious? If asked what is life, v/e reply by asking 
what is matter? 

It seems more rational to think of the cause of 
progress as a self-acting, consciously-producing, 
volitional agency, than as an inert one; unless one 
happens to be blinded by a stubbornly implanted 
belief that any cause, philosophically and scientifi- 
cally speaking, must be, or that it can be, even, 
found in matter as the cause of the action in itself. 

The cause world, very evidently, lies back in the 
world of energies, and our sense tangibilities are 
limited to the effects hereby produced. 

Consequently, in his search for some rational 
explanation of life and form as we find them, their 
cause and purpose, the pioneer delver finds one 
cause only to find it to be but an effect back of 

—31— 



which^ in close proximity, lies the cause of the first 
mentioned. 

Every change is produced or caused by that 
which becomes evident to the senses through that 
alone which it sets in motion; yet, of the existence 
of this unseen agency we feel as certain, in most 
cases, as of that which it moves. In the case of a 
steam engine we know demonstratively that the 
engine is not the most fundamental cause of the 
motion. Nor in biology can that which moves and 
organizes the matter of its forms, the vital energy 
we call life, be much more safely asserted to be a 
property of that which it moves than can that 
v/hich moves the engine be said to be a property 
of the engine. 

In our search for the cause of progress, many 
are found in the immediate vicinity contributing 
thereto; even war and peace, fire and famine, act- 
ing as spurs to effort. But the real factor, the 
power, the creative, constructive, factor is life; and 
is that from which springs intelligence, ideas and 
ideals, social change as well as biological change. 

Nothing further, however, do we know concern- 
ing life than what we have learned from what it 
does — as of electricity — of its cause we know 
nothing. 

—32— 



It appears to emanate from what may be legiti- 
mately^ we think, called the Cosmic Intelligence. 

Judging then of this Intelligence by what we 
have learned by observation, It seems to be the 
cause of life; and It appears to possess a power 
and an intelligence so stupendous, so infinitely tran- 
scending the human comprehension as to elude 
absolutely the grasp of the human mind. 

A practical phisolophy of life, then, must be 
managed inductively, research can best be pursued 
from static effect to dynamic cause. In our every- 
day life and in matters of education, we need only 
to work from the basis of the fact that progress 
comes in response to awakening ideals, an awaken- 
ing that can be voluntarily hastened, set in motion, 
and this motion accelerated by a freely acting will, 
able to intiate cause at any point within the field of 
its information. 

The best modern typewriter is but the to-date 
effect of mental cause piled on mental cause, back 
through the preceding ages; is not the cause here, 
as of all other appearances, events, happenings, ac- 
complishments, an active factor, a something con- 
structively animating, a property found in life, in- 
telligence, mind, not in change, per se ? 

Camped at the termini of pioneering way sta- 
—33— 



tions^ where^ on our arrival, we are left, privileged 
to gaze out upon the wilderness of splendid hope 
and possibilities, we find scientists and philosophers 
still engaged in eager pursuit of an explanation of 
the meaning of life. 

Here, as in all other fields of human endeavor, 
the desire among them is to know and to do more. 
Material scientists and philosophers have accom- 
plished great results, in both the theoretical and 
the practical field, but many refuse to accept of all 
their interpreation, much of which must be viewed 
as a tentative holding. Investigators are simply 
men. Herbert Spencer's law of "change" can not 
be accepted as the cause of progress with much 
satisfaction in the sense of being a cause beyond 
which lies no other discoverable cause. 

And as to his unknowable, just how much of the 
uhnown is unhnomahle we do not know. 

This much, however, is known: the unknown is a 
field into which human beings are not only ad- 
mitted, but one which they are invited to invade; 
nor does the matter end with admittance and invita- 
tion; unless invitation is heeded more urgent means 
are used, something further in the move than mere 
selfish living seems to be sought; for it is a field 
into which human beings are being driven by the 
needs as well as drawn by the attractions of life, 

—34— 



driven by circumstances over which they have no 
control ; driven through destruction, blood, carnage, 
and its accompaniment of sufferings to invade. 



—35— 



DESTRUCTION AND SUFFERING 

ITS EDUCATIONAL VALUE 

HIFE on the animal plane is instinctive, a sur- 
vival through a fitness that is largely phy- 
sical, remorseless, and brutal. 

And on the human plane those who have not 
reached in their unfoldment the stage of conscious 
control, of rationality and moral-awake-ness, give 
to evolution about the same practical interpretation. 

All life appears in an environment in which 
struggle is a requirement of existence; self-preser- 
vation — fitness to survive — depends on the effec^ 
tiveness with which the material means to survive 
is used. 

The survival and unfoldment of the animal has 
been possible through its power to change its action 
sufficiently to meet the requirements of the changes 
that took place in its surroundings; the increasing 
complexity of form, admitting of a higher power 
of functioning was preceded, evidently, by a change 
to greater variety in its environment. 

The highest type of the lower animal, in its 
unfoldment, paused, evidently, at the budding or 
beginning of intelligence and free or individual 
will — paused at the place of a slight tendency to 

—36— 



ureak away and to mold^ where it began to act 
feebly in turn upon its surroundings. 

But on reaching man a marked change is found 
to have taken place ; not a change of physical struc- 
ture alone — which when compared with the highest 
organisms existing among the lower animals^ proves 
to be of a very superior order — but a change to 
very great improvement in functioning, to actions 
infinitely more varied and higher in power. Some- 
where among the missing links, changes that show 
great improvement took place. 

For a marked rebellion against the coercions of 
environment is here seen to be in operation — a strik- 
ing exercise of will and reason, a self-assertiveness 
that goes on evolving into ever greater freedom of 
action, and of better action. 

What we call Progress is made up of improve- 
ment in thought followed by improved conduct and 
improved appurtenances of life. 

All the improvements made in the conduct and 
surroundings of men first appear in thought, as 
ideas or ideals. 

To the extent that the individual fails to respond 
to the requirements of this improving move or pro- 
gressive survival, shirks the lessons of life needed 
to serve this end, does he find himself in trouble. 

—37— 



Keeping comfortable and fit to survive involves an 
improving mastery. 

This understood, the struggle of life, instead of 
being as it appears to religion makers and venders 
to be, a curse, a punishment, or the work of an evil 
spirit called the "devil/* is seen on further awaken- 
ing, or by scientists, to be the action on, through, 
and by men of a natural process which either im^ 
proves and fits them to survive or destroys them. 
Those it cannot make understand, in whom it cannot 
awaken sufficient will and intelligence to meet and 
assist the efforts of this improving change, it kills ; 
thus rendering to progress an indispensable service. 

Acting, then, as spurs, serving as awakeners to 
improvement in thought and conduct, we find in life 
destructive agencies at work, the instrumental per- 
formers of what appears to be — to use a familiar 
term — a Satanic-service, such as injustice in its 
many forms, burglars, hunger, rats, bed-bugs, fleas, 
snakes, poverty, taxes, grafters, quacks, fakirs, 
plutocrats, tyrants, flood and fire, heat and cold, 
earthquake and famine, liars, bacteria, microbes, 
monarchs, and other ignorant bullies; and, to the 
extent that he who, on meeting any of these, fails 
to master their destructive influence, thereby learn- 
ing the lessons which these evidently come to teach, 
is he placed by this failure among the unfitted to 

survive. 

—38 — 



There seems to be in life the move of an unfold- 
ing purpose^ that takes place through a change to 
better building which men are enticed and driven 
to make^ and the destruction of old forms gives the 
freedom^ the material^ and the room to construct 
anew. 

This liberating service of wholesale destruction 
rendered to men will cease to operate as fast as it 
can teach them to liberate themselves with the 
idea^ the active and actual cause factor of progress 5 
that is^ as fast as it can teach them to install 
education proper — voluntary education to take the 
place of involuntary education^ and thus to meet 
the requirements of progress through continuous 
reconstructive change — change of law^ religions^ 
customs ; and as fast as seen to be necessary in the 
interest of an increasing measure of justice and 
harmony. 

Intensive education will bring wisdom^ in the 
train of which will follow increasing honesty of 
conduct^ inexpensive^ comfortable, and continuous 
improvement. 

Upon this unmoral, semi-animal, and semi-intelli- 
gent plane of life, across which the great majority 
of men are yet fighting their way, is, evidently, 
being prepared by the struggle a higher life, a more 
intelligently conducted system, a moral life; hence, 

—39— 



a more harmonious, better fitted to survive and hap- 
pier life. 

As shown above^ the historical pathway of the 
ages reveal a slowly moving^ upward rising, prep- 
aration for this better life, or a process of moral 
evolution. 

The human family finds itself in an environment 
from which it is compelled to wrest a subsistence 
and in which action it is driven and enticed to 
think. 

The pleasure experienced in sense satisfaction is 
one reward of conforming to the requirements of 
the unfolding law. That is, specific or individual 
reward in the form of a passing enjoyment is 
naturally allowed as one of the fruits of endeavor. 
But since there are others to consider, there is, also, 
a requirement of group-action that has no meaning 
in animal evolution. 

One of the best marked demands of human 
evolution is the moral one. Emerging through the 
effort of a natural process and acting largely be- 
yond human will and knowledge, driving men, each 
to respect the rights of others. 

We are led to infer from the evidence before us 
that the rights of all must ultimately come to be 
respected; for the individual slowly learns that 
tiouble ensues when, in satisfying his own desires, 

— 40 — 



he offends by invading the rights of others; while 
on the other hand^ he finds these troubles avoided 
and happiness secured in the proportion that he 
pleases^ by acting within his own rights ; and^ not 
only allowing^ but co-operating with others to do 
the same. This is the way the moral evolves from 
the unmoral to reach mutual service, and is a slow 
process. 

It is evident that men and women cannot play 
this community game of life **on the square" with- 
out having educated into their feelings through 
suffering the natural consequences of injustice. 
This feat, very evidently, cannot be accomplished 
by most men in one lifetime, lived on this plane of 
our present crossing. 

The first stage of the human life to be crossed 
in the unfolding order is the unmoral; the second 
in order is the immoral stage; which when crossed 
the moral stage is reached. We are now, while 
crossing the second, making ready for the third. 

Progress in coming through the ages behind us 
presents us with gradually improving individuals 
and social forms, with an ever greater freedom of 
exchange, with an increase of democracy, justice, 
harmony of action, decrease of poverty, envy, jeal- 
ousy and hatred. 

The program of human life is one of action that 

—41— 



unfolds from wwintelligence to intelligence^ from 
action that is desire-led and need-driven to action 
that is well thought out and predetermined. 

We appear upon this stage of life equipped with 
needs that demand atention^ and with desires that 
call for attention. 

In the midst of this tremendous variety made 
up of countless items upon which we are invited to 
act to satisfy the desire to act^ and but few of which 
can be used, power of decision is gained, intelli- 
gence, and an ever greater strength of will. 

By being compelled to discriminate, to sort, to 
segregate, to decide what to use, what to do, where 
to go, and how long to remain, increase of mental 
calibre is gained. 

In particular do men gain in happiness by being 
driven to learn to respect and guard the rights of 
others. 

To the failure of negative and lazy men and 
women to respond to life's unfolding requirements, 
as noted above, and as found on the one hand, and 
of the predatory type on the other hand, the latter 
led by their utter disregard for the natural rights 
of others, can be traced most of the turmoils of the 
human life. 

These are, evidently, two becoming-unfit-to-sur- 
vive classes; two classes being tempted toward ex- 

—42— 



tinction; the one by its desire for ease^ comfort, 
leasure, play, the effort to get something for noth- 
ings the use of unearned wealth, and the tendency 
to shirk — a tendency which, in no very great length 
of time, either kills or lands its victims in slavery 
to others — and the predatory type, on the other 
hand, self-destructive through the hatred which it 
creates against itself by invading the natural rights 
of others. 

Individual control of more than the amount of 
comfortable use is a present wrong rapidly in the 
passing. Were it not, however, for the failure of 
the private holder to act as an honest trustee or 
property manager, and to exact for the service but 
a legitimate wage (and the wage might be large) 
community property might remain in private hands 
quite indefinitely. 

But in the interest of individual freedom, jus- 
tice, and progress on the one hand, and the pass- 
ing of the agressor on the other, the destruction of 
monopoly is set up in the use. 

The negative philosophy of India destroyed her 
independence and placed her under a protectorate. 
Germany became the victim of her effort to monop- 
olize or dominate individual rights and direct the 
conduct of the world. 

Instrumentally she has become the strengthener 

—43— 



of that more highly evolved form in which by not 
understanding she did not believe. 

One of the very evident aims of this stubborn 
plane of ours is to evolve strength of personality. 

Thus^ in the overcoming of that which assails 
and its accompaniment of sufferings men become 
larger in personality^ learn to feel — to define per- 
sonal rights, to practice moral conduct, and also to 
use the will intelligently. The failure to construct 
and protect by resisting invasion is condemned by 
its fruits; for, if carried to its logical conclusion, 
it would mean the triumph of mosquitos, bed-bugs, 
fleas, other vermin, rats and snakes, over the hu- 
man family — a thing which actually happens to 
lazy men and women. 

The legitimacy of self-defense is made self-evi- 
dent by being established as, not only a condition 
of survival, but of ethical unfoldment. For moral 
values, it may be noted, are evidently understood 
by those alone who have experienced much more 
than an average amount of struggle and suffering. 

Men who live most successfully among other men 
do so with the understanding of what constitutes 
personal rights; in that invasion must be resisted, 
but at its best without the spirit of revenge, with- 
out, as a rule, invasion in turn — that the "other 

—44— 



cheek'' can be turned to a growing, moral man^ but 
not to a tiger, that the pig should be fed on what 
it can eat, and pearls marketed to those willing to 
pay the price. 

Men who have evolved to the love of action and 
to some power of discrimination can see that there 
is nothing wrong with life but ignorance; that hu- 
manity is young rather than particularly diseased, 
and therefore must, for some time yet, have spells 
of colic. 

These warfare pangs, they can see, are the pains 
of growth; the way men take — that they seem 
obliged to take — to learn of better things and ways. 
The evolution of right feeling is brought about 
through struggle, through pessimism, foreboding, 
despair, lying and fretting, stealing, robbing and 
killing. 

Nor, it is evident, can we safely stop if we 
would; the lure of desire and compulsion of condi- 
tions are ever with us; the move of life unless 
forward, turns to one of retracing the way. It is 
possible to slow up for a time, individually and 
socially, to rest in response to the ancestral call 
within us when too much tired with the onward 
push into the new to keep up the pace, but after 
a short rest, we must up and on again. 

Were it possible to turn back continuously and 

—45— 



as a whole the race would move slowly back to the 
primitive condition of unmoral^ warring tribes, a 
social form in which a whole continent would serve 
merely to keep up the precarious existence of a 
few hundred thousand skin-clad, dirty, bookless, 
jealous, hating, revengeful, sullen, sulking, fighting 
barbarians, housed among vermin. 

Life is moving into ever greater complexity of 
expression. To use this complexity with greater 
justice, helpfully instead of aggressively, that it 
may hereby bring greater harmony of action and 
comfort can be and must be learned. This seems 
to be the purpose of compulsory action and of suf- 
fering. To return to the simple in social structure 
and conduct, then, would mean a reversal of the 
unfolding process. 

It is possible to live the simple life of greater 
wisdom, a life, sane, wholesome, just and moral, 
without returning to the simplicity of foolishness 
advocated by many — a life which if followed would 
return the race to the forested American continent. 
This forest, if left untouched, would tend to make 
warring cannibals of the civilized. There are few 
things — nothing, perhaps, except church music — 
that depress the human mind more, that fill it with 
greater gloom and foreboding than a vast, sombre 
forest. The gloom-filled mind of the American 

—46— 



Indian, a forest product, evolved and fixed in the 
shade of the trees and by ages of time, is almost 
immovable. This accounts for his morbidity and 
for the difficulty he finds in adopting our education 
and civil life. He has failed to unfold in the 
shadows and apart from large personal contact. 

In the matter of its unfoldment the world of to- 
day has passed out of and taken many steps beyond 
the tribal condition; but were it not for the fact 
that some tribes and men have remained primitive, 
we could never have learned from whence we came. 

To see this, and also to see that the printing 
press, the railroad and other labor-saving inven- 
tions have set men to thinking, to traveling and 
in other ways to acting, is to have reached a partial 
understanding of present day tumult. 

It means that progress demands a more rapid 
pace of forward move, it has been and is generating 
energy with which to make improving changes; it 
demands economic, financial, and governing changes 
for the better; in nearly all cases, new forms of 
government. 

Rebuilding change or reform has been neglected; 
consequently, the energy which should have been 
used for this purpose has been cumulating for 
many years, and of late has sought release in a 

—47— 



destructive form^ in explosion. ''Equal rights to 
all and special privileges to none'* not having been 
educationally instituted^ progress was obliged to 
initiate the forward move. And^ in order to obtain 
material and room for this purpose^ dishonestly 
working old structures of government^ of religion^ 
and of ideals had to be largely destroyed to make 
way for new forms^ forms having a larger amount 
of working honesty. 

Static forms — rigid structures — must always give 
way to forms that are more dynamic in practice. 
Thus^ the cause of present day tumult can be seen 
to be a disturbance caused by Nature's discard of 
dead forms — forms too long retained by men; the 
natural removal of monuments of selfishness, ad- 
vantages held by the few over the many, and of 
jelousy, hatred and sabotage of the many against 
the fev/. And, unless in the reconstruction, more 
far more plastic forms, are instituted, even greater 
destruction looms in the not distant future. 

To catch a larger view of life is to see that 
co-operation, in the interest of justice, democracy 
and harmony, are on the increase, and because 
knowledge, will power, and sympathy are on the 
increase. Once more, injustice is self-destructive 
through the enemies which it creates. 

To this end our most infamous banking and 

—48— 



land holding systems must go, and even now^ they 
are in the first throes of the passing. 

For some reason^ we are long in awakening to 
the fact that the chief value of what we call prog- 
ress is found in the ever better^ practical definition 
of personal rights^ the moral part of unfolding 
change^ and that all opposition must finally suc- 
cumb to this requirement. 

The first step gained by the awakening individual 
is consciousness and a big appetite; which, to the 
extent that he remains on the animal plane, he 
can use with ruthlessness, while being held to a 
proportional moral accountability only. 

This, very largely, is the plane on which the 
majority of men, down through all the civilizations 
of the ages have lived in their practices, and is 
what explains the downfall of nations. In each 
succeeding civilization, however, an additional few 
reach and teach the form of conduct required for 
the next higher plane and prevent race suicide. 

To the extent that men fail in practice to under- 
stand progress, progress slays ; or, beter to say, it 
is in the law of unfoldment to make all such grad- 
ually slay themselves through the abuse of the 
power and the means with which life entrusts 
them. 

For thousands of years they have been wading 

— *9 — 



through the destruction of their old forms and ex- 
periencing its attendant suffering to learn to re- 
construct in the interest of making honest use of 
their powers and means. And at no time within the 
past history of the world has this move been so 
rapid and wholesale in its destruction of static 
conditions of dishonesty in its efforts to awaken 
men, as today. 

At the beginning of the coming reconstructive 
period^ a better understanding of the meaning of 
what this law of progress is trying to teach will 
have been gained — a keener insight into the import- 
ance of reliability, trustworthiness, honest use, co- 
operation, fellow-feeling; but the gain will be 
much less than the most hopeful are looking for. 

It takes time to evolve into practice the wise and 
honest use of any power — including knowledge — 
even after once being obtained. 

An honest political economy, though many years 
since written, has not yet found its way into the 
minds of men through the public schools ; and in 
order to do so it must break its way through the 
barriers of privilege, of ignorance, of dishonesty, 
and timidity. 

It takes time. The purchase of a machine does 
not equip the purchaser with a knowledge of its 
use ; each item of control and repair requires a sepa- 

—50— 



rate knowledge^ perhaps a strenuous effort, and 
the learning may give the owner much trouble and 
involve considerable expense. 

This same thing holds true of conduct, of infor- 
mation, and of freedom; men experience, in all 
cases, much difficulty in the learning of wise and 
honest use. In a very particular way does this 
hold true of words, sentences and money. 

Since the invention of printing knowledge gain- 
ing has been a rapidly working process, w^hile the 
gain of use has been a comparatively slow one; and 
particularly slow has been the educational and 
moral use of this gain. 

Had a sufficient number of men, in the right 
place, understood twenty years before the Great 
War started, to what the world was being led 
through wrong education and educational neglect, 
this war never would have resulted. This war 
seems to be an effort of the great unfolding process 
to bring that which is now working beyond and 
independently of human will and knowledge within 
the reach of human understanding and control ; and 
to drive men to institute in the world honest use 
of what they learn. 

Education, in its larger than school sense, as a 
factor of progress, though evolving into use much 
more rapidly than at any previous age of the world, 

—51— 



is yet too slow to meet the requirements of the 
moral and the democratic aim of the movement. 

The passing show would make it appear that 
the world is not yet old enough to reach a high 
and rapid pace of unfoldment through education^ 
for in retracing the pathway of moral evolution the 
amount of inertia and dishonesty is found to be 
large in the proportion that the tribal level is ap- 
proached; consequently^ in the same larger pro- 
portion is found the need of the spur service of 
suffering to effect movement — to keep men in un- 
folding motion the tribal condition is one of con- 
tinuous warfare and famine. In the nation^ or 
enlarged tribe^ a change of spur has taken place; 
longer intervals of peace^ alternating with more 
intense and expensive warfare. 

Here^ as in all cases of cause and effect^ many 
effects follow a single cause^ and the impact of a 
cause is great in proportion to the initial power^ 
the point of vantage from which the cause is set 
in motion and the lack of resistance which it en- 
counters in its passage to the points of effect. 

If^ in the case of human beings^ the power of the 
one by whom the cause is set in motion is great^ his 
point of vantage high^ his moral restraint or fel- 
low-feeling of a low or tribal grade, the resistance 
encountered by the blow in its passage small} the 

—52— 



impact and its spur effect will be tremendous — as 
in the case of the German blow in the war just 
closed. 

Hence^ there may not be^ at any time^ so large a 
percentage of the human family engaged in this 
Satanic service as appearances lead us to believe. 
For one breach of faith^ one dishonest act, one 
repudiation may break up the most happy family; 
the same may throw an entire neighborhood or city 
into a turmoil. 

And in the case of nations^ so intimately today 
are international relations entwined that mistaken 
ideals and their entail of unreliable conduct set in 
motion from high points of vantage^ and by a low 
grade of moral feelings have resulted in a v/ar in 
which millions of lives have been sacrificed. 

The failure of a large percentage of persons to 
yet realize that in the move of progress there is a 
moral aim greatly retards^ but cannot stop^ the 
movement; for herein^ evidently^ resides a determi- 
nation and the power to destroy and triumph over 
all opposition. 

The history of progress^ when read understand- 
ingly^ enables one to observe that in each succeedr 
ing civilization a certain percentage of increase in 
general knowledge has taken place^ and that the 
same holds true of moral conduct and of democracy ; 

—53— 



that with each new opportunity there has also been 
made by each a certain percentage of dynamic 
gain in the move ; but it is^ also^ to see the evidence 
that during the time in which this unfolding gain 
was taking place it has been understood but 
vaguely^ and by the occasional man — the law of the 
process has but recently been discovered^ and even 
now^ after more than fifty years since the discovery 
and formulation^ its working is clearly seen by 
comparatively few. 

However^ through each civilization^ in successive 
order, it may be observed, has run the evolving 
activity of intelligence; and of the three leading 
social ideas or correlative concepts, mentioned 
above. 

Why it is not commonly recognized that all along 
the way, after a large percentage of failure in the 
practice, these three have come back into power, 
with a perceptible gain of recognition and activity 
in the practical lives of men, is due to the fact that 
the average man has insufficient knowledge of evo- 
lution and of the history of civilizations, to see 
the former working through the latter. 

The world conflict just closed is the latest and 
most intense evolutionary eifort; and, while having 
gone far, evidently, to burn these three ideals into 
use, will not, it is probable, make the world ex- 

'— 54 — 



tremely wise; not for all future time, safe for the 
best education, for moral conduct, or for democracy. 

For in the matter of the above three, the unfold- 
ing process, it may be reasonably inferred, is yet 
young; the unevolved, unreliable, bully impulsed 
man, though gradually becoming extinct, is slow 
in the passing, too slow to be realized by more than 
a few — he is still well represented in the world 
and for some time yet will be making trouble in all 
nations. 

But the evidence that a long eliminating step on 
the way has just been taken, is encouraging; and 
to the extent that this new opportunity to build 
larger and better fails to secure and protect 
** Equal rights to all and to allow the granting of 
special privileges to none,'* will the next opportu- 
nity to do so — at the end of a thousand years, per- 
haps — be appreciated and used. 

Failure to understand this determination of the 
unfolding law to drive men into a more complete 
practice of what they know — a better definition of 
personal rights or moral conduct, in particular — 
seems to explain our despairing declarations and 
sentimental weepings over the present tumult of 
life. 

This old world is not going to the devil; it is 
—55— 



simply unfolding^ growings and possibly ripening ; 
the passing tumult is the agony of growth. 

This multiform dishonesty that runs through all 
life meets at intervals along the way destruction of 
its equipment of operation^ in decisive battles of 
defeat. 

In each of these periodic battles great suffering 
is experienced by all concerned; but each time 
some awakening takes place; a certain percentage 
of knowledge^ a little more honesty^ some further 
power of united action and democracy is gained; 
more individuality^ more self-reliance^ more inde- 
pendent judgment may be observed in action among 
the masses. 

The cause in action^ of these periodic battles^ 
however^ that is^ during the time of its preparation, 
is but dimly seen^ and by few. That the effect of 
dishonesty is cumulative^ they do not see; that dis- 
honest men and dishonest institutions are prepar- 
ing a great upheaval^ few know and few care. 

But the battle is inevitable; for dishonesty grad- 
ually unfits the dishonest type to survive^ its 
cumulation of results reaches at certain intervals of 
time a rigidity of structure^ requiring extraordinary 
efforts of battle on the part of the reconstructive 
element to break up and remove — for progress 
must move on. 

—56— 



Some day the above will be sufficiently well un- 
derstood by men to prevent educationally the crea- 
tion^ cumulation^ and battle culmination — in both 
the individual and the social sense of meaning. 

For in proportion to his gain of knowledge does 
one find himself able to anticipate and circumvent 
the primitive tendencies of his life that tend to 
make for himself trouble ; also^ to do the same thing 
with the surrounding attractions and coercions of 
his life; to anticipate and circumvent the tendency 
of customs^ of conventions^ of foolish and unjust 
laws, of temptations, politics and religion to engage 
him in this spur service of life to others by making 
him dishonest, unjust, tyrannical, false, and crim- 
inal. For he is gradually taught by experience that 
he gains but a fleeting pleasure for which he must 
pay in the end a round price in suffering. 

Results, both good and had, follow in the wake 
of a great war; good results in the improvements 
of form and conduct it compels men to make, and 
bad results in the wanton destruction of life and 
property and bad moral effects left in its wake. 
And so do we find it to be in the case of typhoid 
fever as well as in other forms of sickness. 

By seeing but one side of the shield, the benefits 
to men that follow in the wake of a great war, and 
overlooking the ill effects that take place — destruc- 

—57— 



tian^ corruption, etc.^ — certain types of mind are 
led to believe war to be the best^ perhaps the only 
way to human betterment. 

If we admit that all great epochal changes for 
the better have been made at times of wholesale 
slaughter and destruction, are we obliged to believe 
that it must always be so, that the process is an 
unchangeable one, that there is no other way? Are 
men the puppets of fate? Man did not always 
remain a monkey; must he always remain a fool 
and a barbarian? 

May we not believe that the same good can be 
obtained, the same progress be made, larger in 
quantity and higher in quality, minus the bad, and 
with comparatively little expense; made by an 
intelligently, honestly conducted process of grad- 
ually improving change — change of both form and 
conduct? Are we not nearing the time when a 
system of this sort can be set up and operated, 
and instead of the universal military training the 
back-number bully would have set up at the end 
of the present conflict? 

Men are learning to remove the cause of typhoid 
fever as well as the causes of many other forms of 
disease. 

In the evolution of transportion, the process is 
better evolved into practice, more voluntary effort 

—58— 



and sanity is here used. Here^ in making the 
change from the horse-drawn to the self-propelling 
vehicle^ the horse and the wagon were not first 
destroyed and most of the children of the country 
killed as a preparation for the installation of the 
new. 

Why^ then^ in making the change from monarchy, 
the already unfitted type of government to survive, 
to the more highly evolved one of democracy, need 
there be such destruction of life and property — 
why in making the change from a less justice to 
a greater justice.^ 

Why, in the change of religion, the forms of 
superstition, to the forms determined by science 
and philosophy, forms of more rational structure, 
do men wade through blood .'^ 

If it be a necessity, is it not made so by mass 
ignorance, in allowing a few selfish interests to 
control and wield the instruments of destruction 
and slaughter.^ 

But why, you may ask, this consent to ignorance ? 
Is it not because men have not evolved to the point 
of consenting to be wise? 

The drama of life is an unfolding one, in the 
facts of which observing and thinking men behold 
the existence of some purpose. The why of this 
particular form of the drama — unfoldment through 

—59— 



working, fighting and suffering — and for which, 
humanly speaking, it would seem possible to estab- 
lish a process much better fitted to secure the same 
end, no one seems able to very clearly show. 

There are few things in life in which we get 
beyond the seeming. 

Dogmatic assertions lead us into fighting posi- 
tions which we are seldom able to successfully 
defend; and in the effort to do so time is used, it 
would seem, that could be better employed, and 
in the end we become martyrs, with a credit for 
this becoming of honesty of purpose alone. 

There is always a better and an easier way to 
secure what the martyr would have than the one he 
takes. Why, then, the martyr? Must he not, at 
his stage, become the victim of what he does not 
know, in order to learn what he needs to know; 
that is, that the best progressive process is one of 
such gradual educational reconstruction as will 
admit of no dishonest cumulation taking place? 

In gaining control of progress the tendency will 
be to use ever less the wholesale method of destroy- 
ing old forms first; men are gradually learning not 
to wait till it is too late to reform without this 
destruction. 

They are gradually learning to anticipate social 
and individual needs in the interest of justice; 

—60— 



gradually learning that each item of advantage 
gained by falsity^ lyings injustice^ each item of 
power of any sort gained to take advantage of 
others, whether of money, of a following as a 
leader of men in matters of religion or of politics, 
has a price to be paid by the one who enjoys the 
advantage, a compensation to be made up, as 
though a penalty; and the payment, as a rule, 
comes in some wholesale form of destruction and 
suffering. 

This Satanic service of falsity, however, consist- 
ing of educating others with false instruction, and, 
also, by making them suffer by robbing them — finds 
no difficulty in securing volunteers ; men and women 
select the fleeting enjoyment of dishonest gain only 
because they are not yet sufficiently awakened to 
realize that they are living on capital borrowed 
from Nature at a high rate of compound interest, 
and that the payment cannot be shirked. 



—61- 



THE UNFINISHED JOB OF THINGS 

QHILOSOPHY not only pioneers the way for 
Science, but follows Science — gives to its 
findings larger interpretations and estimates its 
practical value. 

Science, in its efforts to interpret the meaning 
of life and form, acts in specific fields more than 
holds true of philosophy; philosophy undertakes 
the inclusive or general interpretation and in a way 
that is more speculative or inferential than demon- 
strative, it is more of a pioneering process, con- 
ferring hereby greater freedom of mentation. 

The well balanced mental calibre, though not 
common, is made up of the two combined in one. 

The best philosopher must be, in the true sense, 
a scientist and the scientist cannot be of the best 
without being at the same time a philosopher. 

From the facts of life many philosophical or 
thoughtfully inclined persons are led to infer, with- 
out attempting that more extended inference called 
scientific demonstration, that this life was not set 
up merely to gain and use the things of this every- 
day life. For, in the first place — ^to repeat a 
thought already placed before the reader in a dif- 
ferent form of expression and in another setting, 
but that should be here recalled — this transient use 

—62 — 



of things does not seem to pay for the fierce 
struggle necessary to obtain them ; though each item 
of effort usually renders some service and gives 
some pleasure^ neither the length of time given to 
enjoy nor the intensity of the enjoyment during 
the time seems sufficient compensation for the ef- 
fort; even if we admit that the possession and use 
give anticipated keenness of relish^ it is not for 
long. 

Furthermore^ we are taught by experience that 
in the majority of life's possessions wane of in- 
terest accompanies use; often^ not only departing 
altogether^ but goes leaving behind it a feeling of 
nausea. What does all this mean unless to move 
on — to learn new things^ and find new interests, or 
be made to do so } 

That what we are able to see as the fruits of 
effort is far from being all there is to be gained or 
lost by effort^ there seems abundance of ever-pres- 
ent evidence to show; though but fractionally in- 
terpreted, and by science even. 

The conduct of life is yet largely a matter of 
feeling the way. At the time of most of our acts 
we are still obliged to guess at the consequences. 

On the other hand, in the art of feeling the way 
back from effects, either good or bad, to their 
causes, few have learned much. 

—63— 



Few have learned to overhaul in the mind and 
consider the matter of their observations^ to think 
either scientifically or philosophically^ to wend their 
way back to the cause or causes of present dis- 
turbances and suffering ; consequently^ the maj ority 
learn but little faster from their experiences than 
does the young boy from eating green apples. 

Particularly true does this hold of cases in which 
considerable time intervenes between cause and ef- 
fect; in cases^ also^ where^ in tracing the way back, 
much intricacy and complexity is encountered on 
the way, as in cases of search for the causes of 
bad effects manifesting politically, economically, so- 
cially, and religiously — causes set up in ignorance. 

Every experience of life, however, whether one 
into which men are enticed or urged, has a possi- 
bility of improving conduct. 

Experience, wisely conducted, entices men com- 
fortably forward into improvement; foolishly con- 
ducted, it urges, uncomfortably forward; in stub- 
born cases it drives into either improvement or de- 
struction. 

Through many long terms of experience the effect 
of human conduct segregates it into good and bad, 
places it in one or the other of the two categories. 
By living, acting, and suffering, men awaken in 

—64— 



time to the importance and^ also^ to the possibility 
of making better conduct a matter of cultivation. 

In the fact of free human will^ within certain 
limits^ and to the possibility and the opportunity 
to gain in the action an ever larger freedom^ so 
slowly is awakening achieved that but a very small 
part of human conduct has been brought under 
voluntary control. 

Evolutionary unfoldment, therefore^ could never 
have come about and would not now be further 
possible had there not been naturally instituted in 
the process a means back of human knowledge and 
will to construct and conserve building effects as 
expressed in individuality. 

Why we are thrust into this environment^ enticed 
and driven into action, left to feel our way more 
definitely forward, ever hoping for and but slowly 
finding something better, puzzles us all and keeps 
us guessing. But there is evidence herein that we 
are at work on what may be called the unfinished 
job of things — that we are on the way somewhere 
and for some purpose. 

Though compelled in this life to perform in the 
treadmill of a process, we do not seem, as a rule, 
to accomplish very large results. It gradually 
appears, however, that this process is a bettering 
one, that it is evolving an increasing number of 

—65— 



wise men and improved conditions; we are, there- 
fore, in consequeence, gradually led to infer that it 
conceals a friendly wisdom in its working and far 
more than we can yet understand* 

Why we are obliged to pass through so much 
suffering and over so long a period of time to learn 
that the central purpose of this life is to awaken 
an ever larger intelligence and honesty, we do not 
know. 

It gradually breaks in upon the mind of the close 
observer, fearless reader and thinker, broad gen- 
eralizer, and wise interpreter of ever present facts, 
however, that life is unfolding, and, evidently, in 
response to some purpose — a purpose that in the 
nature of things man can come to understand, but 
only so fast and so far as he arrives at understand- 
ing through experience and education — ^it is certain 
that the ultimate lies beyond present human com- 
prehension. 

In this move there seems to be guidance to next 
steps. Plain to be seen is an effort to improve 
human beings — one that works beyond, and even 
in spite of human effort in many cases to prevent 
improvement. 

But our future we do not know, except by in- 
ference; looking over the pathway of race unfold- 
ment, as well as the one of our own individual 

—66— 



coming there is much to inspire hope in the im- 
provement made and more in what might have 
been done had we known more. 

To the extent that at the age of ten I was able 
to conceive^ my present self^ I have not become 
larger and better. 

To date I seem to have conquered around myself 
a certain area of consciousness^ gained a certain 
power of will and of reason, a certain amount of 
rationality; but to the extent that I am able to 
conceive my future self, in so far as what all the 
above combined and increased in quantity and qual- 
ity will be like, what other powers will appear to 
make up the new man, as to how I am to change, 
as to what my likes and dislikes will unfold to be, 
what will constitute for me as a larger being either 
heaven or hell, I do not know, nor am I able to 
conceive. For, evidently I am to change and be 
changed; I know that today I do not care for a 
little red wagon. 

It does not necessarily follow that because one 
finds his life unsatisfactory he must be classed 
among the disgruntled; his feelings may be due to 
the fact of his satisfaction being but a tentative 
holding. He may have a vision of a life potential 
tied up in himself, and that refuses to be dismissed ; 
a vision of a life transcending this life in value, 

—67— 



even as, or even to a greater extent than, the light 
of our day transcends the one of our night. 

And while this vision presents to his view a great 
contrast to his present life, it need not destroy 
present life value; in fact, it should enhance its 
value, for in his actuality he beholds a potentiality 
in which he also sees a possibility, even a proba- 
bility of realizing; and he finds great happiness in 
this life in building toward this future attainment. 

In other words, his present enjoyment of life 
makes him desire more life, and leads him by 
investigation to see the probability of its realiza- 
tion. 

Life is often called hell. Hell, however, is but 
the birth-pangs of an emerging heaven. When the 
idea becomes sufficiently active in hell, hell becomes 
heaven. 

To us the working process seems to be a slow 
one. Along the driven way each learns to exercise 
an ever greater freedom of will and to direct his 
acts in an increasingly effective way to self-better- 
ing ends; while also finding entangled with his 
voluntary acts ,a large percentage of his conduct 
determined by causes over which he has no control. 

This latter part he slowly and painfully learns 
to invade and bring under control. 

He finds himself here spurred into action by the 



struggle for subsistence ^and submits to the require- 
ments with a growl — lured on by objects of ambi- 
tion^ he achieves and enjoys the fruits hereof to 
the extent that^ in the brief time allowxd^ he learns 
how to use them. 

But can this be all? Do not nearly all men 
resent the shortness of life^ do they not feel that 
the compensation for the effort here received is far 
from adequate? 

Do not the facts of life succeed in making some 
men reason^ and, reasonings to infer that there 
should be more to follow^ a greater compensation 
somehow and somewhere stored away for future 
use^ fruits of effort not intended for immediate 
reaping^ and consisting largely of increased effi- 
ciency^ capacity for far greater enjoyment than 
any yet reached? 

Do we not seem to be at work on the unfinished 
job of things^ or the but well-begun job of things? 
In the move of life that is ever passing before us 
we behold a continuous but unsuccessful effort to 
perfect expression^ to finish structure. 

Has this trying for somethings this unfinished 
job of things^ in which is included all human effort^ 
any meaning — is there^ herein^ any evidence of per- 
sonal continuity beyond the borderline of this life ? 

Are we not obliged to infer that herein concealed 

—69— 



is a strong argument for ijiore personal gain than 
we can see; does not each human vehicle seem to 
be a storage battery and life's action a storing 
process ; is there not in this program of lif e^ though 
as yet but dimly seen and but vaguely interpreted^ 
considerable forecast of coming and larger per- 
sonalities^ events^ and conditions? 

The majority are allowed^ by the laws of life, 
to enjoy the products of their honest toil in a 
somewhat vegetative way, with that feeling of semi- 
satisfaction which usually follows work well per- 
formed. But many (by being born in the midst of 
surroundings from which they can neither extricate 
themselves nor see any way to control; many, also, 
with diseased conditions of body and destructive 
proclivities they cannot manage, seem unable to 
enj oy the fruits of their efforts with even this semi- 
satis faction, and appear to get but little from life. 

These cases, if our theory is a sound one and 
the law of compensation a fact, can be accounted 
for. In consequence of a one-life theory failing 
to render this accounting, however, we are obliged 
either to drop our belief in justice and the law of 
compensation, or to postulate continuous person- 
ality, a rational supplement to which is an evolving 
personality, a personality reaching not only for- 
ward into a gleaming future of consciousness and 

—70— 



happiness^ but back along a diminishing line of 
lives toward the beginning of personality. 

Why^ then^ it may be asked^ do we fail to remem- 
ber? Why, it may be asked in turn, should we 
remember? Would not memory retain prejudice, 
prevent change and defeat progress, the very pur- 
pose for which change was instituted? May we not 
suspect that intervals of forgetfulness, in the in- 
terest of a new start, may be the most important 
feature of change till such time as sufficient mental 
calibre, or soul capacity, has been gained to volun- 
tarily lay aside prejudice? 

Of what value would it be, in the way of expe- 
rience, to a monk of the middle ages to return today 
with the memory of his former personality full 
upon him, steeped in the religious insanity of that 
day? Even in this life we are greatly trammeled 
by our imaginary dignity and greatness ; our fam- 
ily, our money, our college, our church, our politics, 
our race, our country, our society — are we not 
obliged to die to get rid of the memory of these ? 

As noted above few objects of pursuit when se- 
cured give the satisfaction which anticipation, while 
the pursuit is on, leads us to look for; following 
this failure of possession to meet looked for results 
of enjoyment, we find the one of a waning satisfac- 

—71— 



tion with the use, a satisfaction that in no great 
length of time departs altogether. Why? 

If as anticipated "a new broom at first sweeps 
clean/' this clean sweeping can be seen to be 
greatly assisted by the new interest created as well 
as by the new or unworn condition of the broom, 
for the efficiency of the work often departs faster 
than the wear takes place, or with the departure 
of the interest. Especially does the parallel hold 
true in the cases of young people comparatively 
free from prejudice. Their rapid growth seems 
to require frequent change, much variety of life 
and action to meet the requirements of a rapidly 
working character-storing process which makes 
them suffer tremendously. The broom in these 
cases is not cast aside because its usefulness has 
been exhausted, but because something to give a 
new experience is needed; they cannot take time 
to wear out the broom. 

These objects of our desires, pursuits, captures, 
and use, passed rapidly through, one after another, 
seem to be necessary instrumentalities of our un- 
foldment; and, of course, each in its turn must be 
desired with sufficient intensity of anticipated pleas- 
ure in the use to make us act to secure it. 

If, however, each item when secured were for- 
ever after at hand to serve, gave and continued to 

—72— 



give anticipated or preconceived pleasure, there 
could be no change; and without change not only 
would improvement be impossible^ but both the in- 
dividual and society would soon collapse under the 
load of dead forms, or of items gained and held. 

Hence, in the fact that realization fails to quite 
meet anticipation, we find established the first item 
of the means to bring about the formation of the 
new with which progress is forever replacing the 
old. To make this change more certain, note once 
more the second item; this further decline of in- 
terest in experiences and things of use till it has 
departed altogether, and in cases where refusal to 
change continues, a third item, nausea, steps in, 
followed by suffering. 

In the move through life, sufficient reward for 
effort is, as a rule, given in the form of enjoyment, 
to keep up courage, to make us feel that life is not 
quite the bunko game that it would otherwise seem 
— though in all cases this does not succeed: there 
are many suicides. 

It is in the law of life and growth, however, not 
to leave us disconsolate, never without some new 
interest, something to inspire hope, never without 
a lure, without some tangible idea-attachment — 
some pursuit, if we seek it; a stone pile, a boulder, 
a totem-pole, some fad, a gold mine, a book, an 

—73— 



idol of some sort to keep us on the way. In case 
we fail in the seeking we have a kick coming. 

And while each pursuit^ each idol, is in its turn 
serving a passing need, it is viewed by those whom 
it serves with the eye of faith as a permanent 
reality; viewed by its devotees so much as an end 
in itself as to cause them agitation, discomfort, and 
suffering whenever their faith encounters the least 
discredit or opposition. 

All this suffering, through which is evolved 
kindlier feelings, is indispensable and inevitable; 
consequently, each idol must be smashed in turn, 
and in the interest of new carvings, revisions, or 
entirely new idols and new madnesses. Thus men 
move onward and upward in consciousness, improve 
in their concepts; from the stone-pile worship to 
the totem-pole; on they come through animal-wor- 
ship, sex-worship; on into Christianity; this they 
drop and go scooting across the plane of material- 
ism; once more they change and move into this 
later-day hope of immortal youth and perpetual 
happiness as embodied in Christian Science, New 
Thought, and other current awakenings, awakeners 
and inspirations of the present time. 

Some of the above mentioned, as race unfolders, 
have come and gone, others now in operation, in 
spite of efforts to perpetually retain them, will 

—74— 



serve their, turn^ and gradually, through loss of 
interest and by making men suffer, fade away, and 
give place to newly formulated God concepts, 
through the power of the rare individual to initiate 
a new concept, one better fitted to serve the next 
larger phase of growth in the order of its coming. 

But it would seem that, in so far as any of these 
forms inspire the hope of something for nothing, 
of big reaping for little sowing, of short cuts to 
perpetual youth and continuous happiness, are we 
obliged to suspect their primitiveness ; so far do 
they seem to declare their youthfulness as to be 
structures of a hope inspired by a lack of knowl- 
edge. 

Through the pleasures of life and the fact of 
an improving growth there is kept alive in us hope 
and action ; through the evidences of a natural com- 
pensation there is sustained in us the belief that 
for this action there is a greater compensation 
conserved to follow; we are hereby treated as we 
treat children — rewarded for action with things 
that please our feelings, that gradually we may 
come to better understand them and their larger 
purpose. When, however, we become too well satis- 
fied and lazy, and refuse to change for the better, 
we are spanked and made to go ahead with this 
unfinished job of things. 

—75— 



NATURE'S INTERPRETERS 

HOR ALL practical purposes^ what matters it 
whether we as personal entities have sought 
this present physical embodiment consciously, or 
have been thrust herein by what may fitly be called 
the Cosmic Intelligence? 

This much is certain, we arrive with a desire to 
eat and to otherwise act, hereby seeming to assist 
in a process that soon builds a physical body, while 
printing pictures upon the blank memory tablets 
brought along. The moment the individual awakens 
in life he begins opening up around himself an 
area of consciousness, and if he reaches the age of 
reason he finds himself in the midst of a re-adjust- 
ing and re-constructive process in which he is en- 
ticed and driven to take part with but little under- 
standing. 

For before his body is fairly matured his propa- 
gation instinct awakens and calls for recognition 
with an overwhelming insistence ; this provided for, 
he finds it entailing innumerable other desires; 
necessities, and troubles, but from each of these 
items to which he must give his attention he finds 
himself learning all along the way. 

What can be the meaning of this process that 
keeps him so busy and for so short a time? Does 

—76— 



there seem to be any meaning herein? If it is 
building a permanent individuality^ why do we find 
so few equipped with sufficient consciousness and 
proof of the fact to stand the test of reason when 
given to others? 

Consciousness of a fact becomes possible through 
the existence of the fact in contact with a conscious 
instrumentality — brain and mind^ the man^ or con- 
scious entity. 

As shown above, men have become aware of the 
evolutionary process but slowly, down through the 
ages; in the same way does the individual come to 
see the same thing taking place in himself, usually 
by having his attention called to the facts in proof 
hereof by some book or friend. Not all men can 
be thus awakened, however, and, so far as the evi- 
dence goes, no living entity below man. The lower 
animals sense most of the objects sensed by man, 
but they do not, and evidently can not, awaken to 
much of the meaning hereby conveyed. 

In proportion to the means and opportunities, 
always spread before us for making great discov- 
eries and great inventions, and the men to make 
them, comparatively few are made in any age; 
few catch the deeper or interpreting meaning of 
the things and acts of life. 

At any date, but one man, as a rule, among 

—77— 



millions is able to see and to express understand- 
ingly any strikingly new meaning of that which all 
behold in common. Most men see and feel much 
with no high understanding of its import. 

The facts of life refuse to give up their meaning 
without effort^ to the careless observer of facts ; the 
unthinking observer can not be a successful in- 
terpreter. 

The task of invention^ origination, and discovery, 
that is, successful initiative action, is naturally left 
to a type comparatively few in number, the an- 
alytic, and, more particularly, to the synthetic type 
of mind. 

The average mind has reached but little power 
of either analysis or synthesis, of separating the 
elements of structure and recombining them in a 
new whole; little power, therefore, to interpret the 
larger meaning of life. 

Interpretation is a service to men that has always 
been performed by the scientifically and philosophi- 
cally equipped types of mind, two less common or 
reflective types. 

The interpreter of meanings is one who can see 
some plan in the show, detect in structures the ele- 
ments of structure — ferret them out in the different 
disguises which they are obliged to assume in each 
combination. Nor does this hold true of chemical 

—78— 



combinations alone; it holds true of life forms, 
biological structures^ social and religious forms, 
word elements, language, machinery, and mental 
operations. 

If others in the day of Columbus saw what Co- 
lumbus saw, they failed to so express their vision 
as to make it understood — failed to furnish the 
proof that gives men credit for their findings; if 
they saw, they did not catch the vision of meaning 
with sufficient clearness to respond in revealing it 
to others. 

Men who have no power to give to their dis- 
coveries visible expression obtain neither values for 
others nor values or credit for themselves. 

If Lief Erickson discovered the American conti- 
nent, he failed to gain credit for so doing, as he 
should, for not making it known to the world. The 
negative or unexpressive person meets with the 
same fate as the secretive, the lazy, and the miserly 
person; they all lose out in the race for fame; 
and also, we may well believe, lose much in the 
matter of personal attainment and happiness. 

He who would monopolize his good finds, fails 

to share them with others, ''hides his light under 

a bushel,'* because of his greed, of his secretiveness, 

or through his lack of the energy of expression, 

loses the benefit a generous spread would bring to 

himself. 

— 79 — 



There is in the world plenty from which to learn, 
for all, abundance to acquire and to use, if we can 
learn not to monopolize, to waste or to hoard. 

But lack of energy is largely what prevents men 
from rapid increase in outlook, is what destroys 
the lifting of the horizon to broadening views from 
the foothills of life. 

The failure of most persons to see the evidence 
that the process of life is constructing permanent 
personality by storing its building results seems 
to be due to the above mentioned fact ; resulting in a 
failure to collect, to examine, and to so interpret the 
proof by which we are all surrounded in abundance 
as to understand it to be proof. A blind man who 
had never heard of an automobile could learn noth- 
ing of its entire structure, power and use by all he 
could learn unaided from the examination of one of 
its wheels. 

The keenest of sight may be, often are usually, 
perhaps the dullest of observers in the sense of 
understanding what they see; therfore, the dullest 
interpreters of meaning. 

In a vague way, during all the historical ages, a 
few have been able to foretell coming events, a 
fact attributed to inspiration. If there is such an 
attribute of mind as inspirational prevision, to what 
is it due.*^ Is it not due more than to anything 

—80— 



else to the ability to sense understandingly , and 
thus to detect the elements of structure in their 
many disguised combinations ; to the ability to col- 
lect and so group the facts of life as to catch here- 
from their general meaning ; to draw from the facts 
by inference and with great rapidity far-reaching 
conclusions^ having a large measure of correctness- 

For this means capacity that comes of expanded 
consciousness and is due^ as a first step^ to having 
the mind well stored with facts^ general and spe- 
cific, and as a second step, to the interpreting 
power of the generalizer. 

That toward which the world is moving is always 
outlined in the move of today, as may be seen by 
a study of the pathway of the ages. 

In every civilization the cause factors are at 
work on future events; to the extent of the clear- 
ness of vision with which these can be seen does 
prophecy become possible. But in this prophetic 
estimate the modifying power of the human ele- 
ment, and particularly the psychological element 
must be considered; the haziness of past prophe- 
sies are due to the fact that psychology has never 
been well understood; little power gained to say 
what men are to do from what they have done and 
what they are now doing. 

It is evident, however, that man is being driven 

—81— 



and enticed to learn to use established laws to 
build of himself and his surroundings what he 
would be and have as rapidly as he can see what 
these are. 

It is this factor of the unfolding problem that 
embarrasses the prophet^ this guessing what men 
can and will do to mold future events into some- 
thing different from what they would be if man 
with his will to do were left out of the problem. 

The length of any particular national life and the 
heighth to which it is to rise in civilizing achieve- 
ment depends on the ability of its people to change 
improvingly in the interest of justice^ or we may 
say on the rapidity of change toward^ and the near- 
ness of approach to^ securing * 'equal rights to all/* 
and to eliminating the granting of ^'Special Privi- 
leges'* to any; by establishing what they learn in 
education. 

Reliability^ trustworthiness^ honesty^ though 
among all the factors of the human life in its 
growth and action by far the most stabilizing and 
harmonizing^ are^ nevertheless^ the most difficult 
to evolve into the practices of men. The aver- 
age reliability of a people may also be taken as 
that with which to measure the probable length of 
their national life and harmony of action during 
the period of their stay. 

—82— 



All inharmony of life^ small or great^ individual, 
social, national or international, is an exact meas- 
ure of the average ignorance of men and therefore 
of their dishonesty. 

To the extent that dishonesty as an effect of 
ignorance, and acting in turn as a cause to set up 
killing strife among men, and the action herein of 
the human will, become clearly outlined in the 
mind of the individual, can he become a prophet. 

All idealists and philosophers worth mentioning 
during the ages ; all seers, sages and reformers, see- 
ing herein the cause of strife, have been unanimous 
in their efforts to aweken men to the importance 
of reliable conduct. 

And may not the well known smallness of their 
success be due to the fact that men have not yet 
unfolded to where any possession can be appreci- 
ated; that does not come by the toilsome way; as 
a product of work, enduring, suffering; else why 
the small success of education and the total failure 
and destructive influence of unearned money or 
property } 

It is evident to the best thinkers that individual 
lives are unfolding. 

And, since the tendency can be seen to be up- 
ward, they infer the purpose to be a beneficient 
one. 

—83— 



What man will ultimately become^ what he and 
his surroundings will be like^ they do not know, 
nor do they feel able to infer^ even. They come 
to realize the necessity of proceeding beyond the 
known by short steps of demonstration^ the import- 
ance of careful inference^ and of using the faculty 
of guessing as a will-directed scout. 

The human mind has not yet unfolded to where 
it can with specific certainty reach far with single 
efforts; nor in matters of religion do wise minds 
attempt to do so; for^ once the religious childhood 
of men with all its simple^ foolish dogma is left 
behind^ they can see the absurdity of great claims. 

Though the efforts of scientific men have brought 
results of great value^ both theoretical and practi- 
cal, it becomes ever more evident that comparatively 
little of what Nature has to teach has yet been 
learned. 

Enough has been gained, however, to establish 
the certainty of an orderly constructive and re-con- 
structive change, through which life builds for itself 
forms of continuously increasing complexity and 
correspondingly higher powers and qualities of 
functioning. 

Many, therefore, very largely in consequence 
hereof, are led to infer that life is moving in re- 

—84— 



sponse to some purpose; the culmination, the spe- 
cific form in which this purpose is to manifest, 
thinking and honest men realize that they do not 
know and they leave the claim of such knowledge 
to men who feel willing to claim to know. 

All life^ it has been discovered, constructs of mat- 
ter the transient forms of its unfolding functioning; 
it has, also, been demonstrated by actual measure- 
ment that matter, instead of being confined to this 
plane of sense tangibility, extends indefinitely 
beyond the realm of human consciousness. 

With present understanding of appearances, with 
what we know today, we guess or infer the purpose 
of life; but tomorrow we should — by having col- 
lected and interpreted the meaning of more facts, 
know more demonstratively , and then be able to 
make further inference, to advance with our knowl- 
edge of facts and our guesses one step farther into 
interpretation. Divine revelation, as conceived by 
men, cannot be refuted, but it may well be ques- 
tioned; when rationally viewed, revelation seems to 
come by a gradually awakening process, through 
human capacity to understand, acquired by effort. 

Most of the present forms of religion bear evi- 
dence of being guesses at the purpose of human life 
and destiny, guesses made during the childhood of 
the race, and are but feeble structures, serving 

—65— 



poorly — except to a mentally primitive few — the 
expanding needs of today. So much^ evidently, are 
they the holdings of fear, of prejudice, and of 
selfish professional interests, as to be considered by 
intelligent persons too puerile to combat even were 
it not for the fact that their dead forms block the 
way to the adoption of alive and improved 
varieties. 

The true and honest revelation seems to be that 
through perception, reflection, will, conjecture, and 
inference — add intuition, if you please — a continu- 
ously larger measure of truth is obtained. 

This lure of curiosity, of desire to know, com- 
bined with the ability to build and hold tentatively, 
to form theories and to pursue ideals in an effort 
to satisfy the mental call, is what keeps men in- 
terested and filled with hope, while fighting, suf- 
fering, and learning. 

Saviors of men — and there have been many — are, 
evidently, in so far as they differ from other men, 
the more highly specialized of experience. In their 
special or divine mission capacity they remain in 
the memories of men after they have died, and act 
as ideal concepts, serving as figures on the race 
totem-pole. 

This struggle of life awakens intelligence; men 
gradually learn to improve their structures and 

—86— 



their conduct. The evolutionary changes that take 
place in the individual find their way into the 
social organism^ here in turn to serve individual 
needs, and as causes to effect in turn further 
changes in the individual. 

Since, however, the individual soon dies and 
passes beyond sense tangibility, comparatively few 
can see the possibility of personal continuity. Since, 
also, the secondary feature of evolution, the social, 
approaches nearer to a visibly continuous improve- 
ment, it can be so readily seen, through the pages 
of history, to be retained as to appear to many to 
be the only purpose for which the individual exists 
and acts. 

If the student has cultivated the capacity to 
understand what science has to teach, it equips him 
with some knowledge of the unfolding scheme of 
life; that is, with a knowledge of evolution. With 
this equipment in hand, he soon comes to realize 
that science does not follow evolution into all of 
that to which it leads by inference; for inference 
logically followed herefrom leads him to think, and, 
thinking, to suspect, and to look for the proof that 
the social organism is an instrumentality evolved 
merely to serve, and but transiently, individual 
ends. 

Is he not, then, led from here to the further 

—87— 



inference that personal life cumulates personal ex- 
perience ; that each builds and holds personality for 
permanent use and enjoyment; that^ in justice, 
acquisitions must be carried forward with improve- 
ment and cumulated; from incarnation to reincar- 
nation^ or from one form of embodiment to another ? 
Evolution^ if logically followed to where it leads, 
makes the above appear to be a strong probability. 
This following requires some departure from cur- 
rent beliefs, but current beliefs often prove when 
examined to have but little value. 

To question Nature is one thing, and to obtain 
a correct or truly scientific answer is quite another 
thing — the difficulties of science are not found in 
the questions it asks Nature, but in understanding 
Her replies. The meaning of the subject matter 
of science has not all been interpreted; it admits 
of continuously new and larger interpretations. 

A knowledge of what the science of today has to 
give equips the student with the means of new 
interpretations; so firm a grasp of matter beyond 
present sense contact does it give that he cannot 
easily question the possibility it holds of furnishing 
human personality with a new instrument of ex- 
pression (a new body) as well as the fashioning 
material with which to gain new and extended self- 
building experiences, and, the environment of a life 

—88— 



in which the character gained through the experi- 
ences and education of this life can be used to fur- 
ther and enlarging ends. 

Of the probability of the persistence of human 
personality, and its operation within this realm 
beyond our present sense contact, there is abund- 
ance of more than inferential evidence for those 
who, by investigation, deserve to know. But since 
a firm refusal is a specialty of unwise stubbornness, 
many will hold aloof and remain unenlightened. 

Except on the theory that nearly all persons do 
sense and believe in this more of life, in the reten- 
tion of personality, this one thing of war, of which 
men seem guilty, can in no sense be rationally ex- 
plained. 

There is absolutely no way of explaining why 
men consent to be frequently caught in a war trap 
of their own setting, without postulating either a 
future life in the interest of which warfare ex- 
perience cultivates great educational value, or that 
men have far less practical common sense than the 
animals by which they are surrounded. 



—89— 



MATTER, ENERGY AND PERSONALITY 

"^F=^ERE, then, it seems legitimate to briefly can- 
JLJJ sider the embodying possibilities of matter: 
If — as believed by the majority — soul, in the sense 
of retained personality apart from present physical 
form, be a fact; and escapes from the physical at 
what we call death, how does it, on escaping, man- 
age to exist and function? Of what is it composed? 
Does it exist and function as some form of organ- 
ized energy or through the instrumentality of some 
form of matter existing beyond our present sense 
limit? 

Does matter seem to furnish any means by which 
present gain of personality can be retained, the 
matter of another embodiment, different, yet simi- 
lar; and, also, the means of a correspondingly con- 
stituted environment in which to continue this well- 
begun process of personal building? 

As observed above, it has been demonstrated 
that the unaided senses do not reach the limit of 
matter ; in fact, they teach us but little of the actual 
in regard to matter. 

The limit and destruction of matter is in the 
seeming, in the human consciousness, not in matter. 
Through instrumental measurements, matter has 
been proven to exist and extend indefinitely beyond 

—90— 



the human senses ; far beyond the power of nistru- 
mental measurement^ even. 

Science took a long step in advance when it suc- 
ceeded in proving that matter is neither destroyed 
nor diminished in amount by combustion^ or by 
increasing its vibration with heat till it passes be- 
yond sense contact. 

The consistency of matter is determined by its 
vibration; that is^ the rate of its vibratory speed 
or molecular motion is determined by the amount of 
heat energy absorbed; the greater the amount of 
heat taken_, the more widely separated become these 
smallest divisions^ the less densely is it packed 
and the more space does it occupy. 

While^ on the other hand, as the heat — the cause 
of vibration — departs, vibration slows down, shrink- 
age takes place, the particles approach each other, 
and the matter becomes proportionately dense and 
occupies less space. 

Matter, in taking heat energy into latency, be- 
comes expanded; when a certain amount has been 
absorbed it reaches the fusion point — that is, it 
melts ; if this absorption continues the matter con- 
tinues expanding, and when a certain further 
amount has been taken it has so far expanded with 
vibration as to reach the point of vaporization, and 
has then passed beyond human sight or sense grasp. 

—91— 



Water absorbs sufficient heat from the sun to 
effect its evaporation; in this expanded invisible 
form it then rises and may be carried along by a 
warm current of air to where^ by meeting a cold 
current^ the extraction of the heat takes place ; it 
then shrinks and becomes visible in cloud or in a 
fall of rain or snow. 

The heating of matter^ then^ means the absorp- 
tion of heat and expansion ; the cooling means heat 
extraction and contraction. 

This fact of expansion and contraction (caused 
by a difference in temperature) is one of the great 
problems of human structure^ including machinery. 
Concerning the cause of this action^ the unaided 
senses tell us but little. 

The human senses take note of matter^ — as ob- 
served above — in but a narrow space of vibratory 
motion^ while science (through the instrumental 
measurements of vibration) demonstrates the con- 
tinuous extension of matter beyond sense contact, 
matter having a rate of oscillation too rapid for the 
grasp of present consciousness. 

Sound waves must reach a certain rate of 
vibratory speed before they become audible and 
they do not greatly increase in motion before they 
pass beyond the reach of the ear or auditory nerve. 
The pulsation, however, goes on out into infinity, 

—92— 



so far as we know^ of matter, instead of becoming 
extinguished, as taught by our common sense or 
ordinary sense contact. 

But so it is with light; when light reaches a cer- 
tain rate of vibration, objects bathed herein become 
and remain visible for a limited space, beyond 
which, and at a higher rate of vibration, all be- 
comes darkness to the human eye, passing on, as 
does sound, into an infinity of matter; so far as 
human instruments can measure, no stopping place 
can be found in either case. 

What does this realm, into which pasesses matter 
in motion, hold — what is its purpose.^ Why and 
how are we excluded by sense limit.'* 

This space of our own functioning is occupied 
by matter of which we are not conscious ; may there 
not be herein many planes of such, the substance 
of each plane having an independence of action, 
nearly or quite perfect, through its own particular 
rate of vibration, and having, therefore, a difference 
in consistency.^ 

Is it not conceivable that each of these planes 
could be occupied by intelligences, amply equipped 
with the means of personal expression, bodily in- 
struments, composed of the same material and hav- 
ing the same rate of vibration, as the plane; and 
if so, would not each group be conscious of the 

—93— 



vibrations and^ therefore^ of the facts on its own 
plane, while being perfectly unconscious of any- 
thing not of its own plane? 

Is not, then, much of the possibility — if not the 
probability — of a future life found in the sciences 
of physics and chemistry, in which, evidently, the 
greatest discoveries are yet to be made? 

In conformity with the above reasoning, then: 
If that which science claims to have already demon- 
strated of matter and of energy is a correct in- 
terpretation of the meaning of its collected facts, 
it is not difficult to see that you, reader, might today 
pass through the change called death, awakening 
on the "other side,'* as Spiritualists say, and by 
having passed into a medium having a diiferent rate 
of vibration, you would, nevertheless, have little 
immediate consciousness of what had taken place. 

For your new instrument of expression (your 
body) by being composed of the same material, and 
by having the same rate of vibration as the plane 
of matter into which you had passed, would, there- 
fore, have, to you, about the same appearance of 
substantiality as the one you had just left. 

But if this passing be a fact, there may be as- 
sumed to be a purposive difference; and one for 
which this change was made. 

The new field and the new body — it may be fur- 

—94— 



ther and legitimately assumed^ we think — would 
furnish the instrumentalities through which to gain 
further personality-building experience. 

May not^ then^ this change called death be con- 
sidered as a part of all change — a part of evolution^ 
the purpose of which is the release of the human 
soul from the bondage of its prejudices^ its creeds, 
its dogmas, and its ossifications ; to give it, through 
a new and more plastic medium, and a new instru- 
ment of expression, a new chance to expand in 
mentality, power of will, and personality, to grow 
larger in consciousness and happier?' Even in this 
life men became very greatly changed for the better 
by a change of thought, of ideals and of environ- 
ment. 

Once more, is it not legitimate to suppose this 
renewing change to be possible here the moment the 
law of change is sufficiently well understood to be 
used intelligently; cannot the purpose served by 
death be achieved without death? 

But when one has passed into a new medium of 
vibration, we may well suspect that the difficulty 
of sensing back into the one just left behind is 
quite as great as the one here encountered of 
sensing ahead. 

May we not suspect that each plane is a field of 
vibratory imprisonment for the purpose of protec- 

—95— 



tion during each educational term^ or period of soul 
growth? Are we not functioning in this present 
limited^ hard^ unyielding environment for unfold- 
ing purposes ? And when the limit of learinng has 
herein been reached^ may not a further purpose 
be served by departure^ by escaping from this trou- 
blesome^ prejudice^loading school-room^ through the 
gateway of what we call death? And may it not, 
if true, be necessary that we be kicked out, and 
when out, well to keep us for a time, at least, 
out of the foolish, soul-retarding, attachments that 
we have not learned of ourselves to drop in this 
life? Is it not established as a necessity in the 
law of our unfoldment, this release from the bond- 
age of our present and less selves, in the interest 
of our coming and larger selves followed by a 
closing and locking of the door behind us on our 
old environment? 

May it not, also, be further inferred, and legiti- 
mately that when the art of casting off retarding 
and burdensome attachments — that is, the art of 
dying daily, of laying aside a poorer thing for a 
better thing — has been learned, the art of passing 
at will from plane to plane will also have been 
learned ? 

Anyhow, without advancing more of what may 
appear, is quite certain to appear to most readers 

—96— 



to be foolish speculation^ it is not difficult to see 
that matter more attenuated than this must^ by 
reason of its attenuation and mobility, admit of a 
greater rapidity of change. 

And, if personality persisits, if the ego stores the 
educational results of its experiences and goes on 
cumulating these results through many lives, the 
dynamics of its move may be assumed to increase 
with the increase of knowledge rather than to di- 
minish, and would not, it seems probable, be les- 
sened by the change called death, if matter is one 
thing, energy another, and personality still another. 

This next plane of matter, yielding by reason of 
its greater plasticity much more readily to intelli- 
gent manipulation, may be assumed to offer to the 
personality equipped with undiminished dynamics 
of action the means of learning much more rapidly,, 
of expressing a higher degree of intelligence, and 
reaching a greater amount of happiness than in this 
one of our present occupancy and functioning. 

Of course, there is this to be said in favor of life 
upon the present plane of stubborn material, where 
building, rebuilding, and education is a laborious 
process: the individual is here obliged to cultivate 
a strength of will to overcome, and he also, through 
suffering, cultivates a feeling of appreciation and 
sympathy that, no doubt, would be impossible in 

—97— 



a medium of more easily yielded matter. But in 
no ease does he leave this plane of matter as what 
we conceive to be a finished product^ an ideal man 
or master; he seems to be taking his departure for 
a higher institution of learning. 

May not the belief^ then^ that this present life 
produces any finished job, and in the human case 
is the beginning and end of human personality, be 
due to a meagre supply of information, and to 
that which of necessity must follow — ^to a limited 
power of consciousness and of reasoning .f* In other 
words, may not such belief be due to having in 
mind but few of the countless number of facts ever 
before us; or, having the facts in mind, then due 
to the inability to see them in their elements, or 
to trace their relationships and interpret their 
meaning rationally.^ 

This ability constitutes the scientific type of 
>^ind : many can collect facts, but the scientific type 
\f mma can not only collect facts, it can see 
the elements of structure; it can sort and classify, 
arrange in groups, and trace relationships with a 
close approach to correctness; and, finally, reach 
a tentative, though highly probable, demonstration. 

It is difficult for one without this ability to realize 
that there are others who can see in the common 
s very day facts of life what he fails to see. 

—98— 



This scientific insight requires such knowledge 
of the laws of evolution or of unfolding life as is 
possessed by few. Few have insight that comes of 
having a broad knowledge and the power to use it^ 
the power to generalize, which gives the ability to 
trace the pathway of effects back to their imme- 
diate causes; and from here on to causes having 
considerable remoteness. 

For only the few keep up with the march of the 
best in human progress, the successful researches 
of science. Many have not yet awakened to the 
importance of, and the advantage to be gained by 
self-improvement; some lack opportunity, others 
fail through inertness, still others lack the courage 
to break through the barriers of convention, ignor- 
ance, and prejudice, and catch the message of 
environment. 



—99— 



PROGRESS CASTING OFF ITS DEAD 

^^^/HE process of human evolution is largely, as 
V. V yet^ an involuntary one; while engaged in a 
ceaseless eifort to improve human society, it is 
also, evidently, making a greater effort, even, to 
improve the individuals whom it appears to be 
unfolding society to serve. 

A practical observer of men and events is led 
to believe that at present the larger part of human 
conduct is determined behind the scenes of life, 
that most of what men now do is prompted by that 
which determines the flow of circumstance, acting 
beyond and over human intelligence and will. 

But he observes, also, that we are all hereby 
learning that these circumstances of life, acting in 
a compulsory manner upon us, do so in response 
to the demand of what appears to be an unfolding 
law: that they, by bringing continuously more of 
the hidden into view and within the sphere of our 
understanding, bring it also under our control. 

For the process is such that man, in pioneering 
his way forward, is obliged not only to overcome 
the resistence we know to be common to all new 
lines of effort, but in doing so, in his ignorance, 
he makes wrong moves, which trouble herefrom 
always tends to drive him to correct. 

—100— 



He also dislikes to change and move on^ conse- 
quently he forms prejudices, habits, dogmas, con- 
ventions, dignities, aristorcracies ; builds a calcined 
body, and other static forms or shells, for a passing 
service, but within which he would imprison himself 
eternally, were it not for this law of a larger wis- 
dom working within, beyond, and over his will and 
knowledge, driving him with suffering to break up, 
cast aside, while forming new and better to serve. 

Thus continuously released, to some extent, for 
the onward and upward move, he in time learns to 
do this for himself. Socially speaking, then, what 
we find happening may be shown, by some thoughts 
paraphrased from a former booklet of mine: 

At times when social progress has somewhat 
slowed down by the increasing number and tighten- 
ing grip of these fixing forms of iniquities, and 
progressive thought energy keeps on generating 
within the group, there springs up an unrest among 
the people. 

Could all books at such times be destroyed — as 
just previous to the Middle Ages — followed later 
on by the masses of men and women being pre- 
vented from printing and speaking their thoughts 
— progress would stop and the stand-pat element 
would in its ignorance soon destroy both itself and 

—101— 



all governing and regulating groups with its monop- 
olistic and bullying injustice. 

For the law of life is a law of progressive change, 
a move toward ever greater justice and freedom of 
action, which means a higher life. 

It is the freely acting oppositions of life, the 
competitive conflicts, that set men to thinking; and 
the more they think, the more do they write and 
print, aspire to better things and set others to 
doing the same thing. 

Whenever through the printing press, then, a 
larger amount than usual of thought energy that 
makes for progress has been generated and set in 
motion within any given group, or when many new 
ideals have become active, there comes an increase 
of desire for greater freedom of expression; a 
desire which, if repressed by conservative forms 
and forces, manifests as unrest that may spring up 
within nations, or as hostilities between nations. 
With increase of repression the resentment and 
bitterness becomes ever greater, till such time as 
but a trifle of added provocation is needed to start 
up some form of turmoil, such as strikes, rebellion, 
revolution — some form of warfare. 

The suffering, then, that accompanies the human 
life, through economic injustice, famine, war, 
monopoly, domestic inharmony, sickness and crime, 

—102— 



they see to be the means by which men are 
aroused into a larger consciousness and independent 
action; that only so fast as suffering can awaken 
understanding and strengthen the will to replace 
old forms with new, to reform, can the service of 
suffering be dispensed with. 

It must be so; the natural action of the law of 
progress being suppressed by fixed and non-pro- 
gressive forms, the effort of imprisoned energy 
seeking expression is causing tension and distress, 
by manifesting in jealousies, injustice, wrong use, 
selfishness, lies, falsity that creep into and as is 
now manifesting in every department of life. 

It is in the law of progress not to allow this to 
continue; these old forms of injustice must be 
broken up, the static condition destroyed, impris- 
oned energy released, new ideas and ideals allowed 
expression, and progress, not only allowed but 
helped to move onward. 

This move can be retarded; but since it is the 
action of natural law, it can no more be perma- 
nently suppressed than can the move of the 
planets. Progress is yet more the product of a 
Cosmic urge than of human determination. 

When the above fact has been sufficiently well 
learned to become practical great joy will begin 
appearing among men. 

—103— 



This same law of unfolding demand is always in 
action between and among individuals and in every 
family^ as well as within the life of every per- 
sonality. Men act up to the size of their calibre. 

If the aim of life is chiefly educational, it follows 
that neither the prodigal nor the miserly under- 
standing of life is the correct one. 

Thrift becomes legitimate in the interest of moral 
growth, also, for the reason that men must learn 
by building and conserving, and particularly so by 
using; the second or more rapidly building half of 
the dual process, the educational. For a single 
book may enlighten a thousand minds; a dollar, 
if allowed to circulate, may give access to countless 
meals; it is a mistake to hoard, either as a miser 
or a banker, but also a mistake to waste things of 
use on those who cannot use them rationally. 

It is, therefore, a part of this naturally estab- 
lished program of life that unless we give expres- 
sion to our new ideas, unless, when the educational 
possibility of a given experience has been ex- 
hausted, we find another; unless we keep carving 
new figures on our totem-poles, we stop growing 
and become something uncomfortable to ourselves 
as well as to others, often a social menace, as seen 
in the boy of undirected energy who, by having 
nothing else to do, breaks the neighbors' windows. 

—104— 



Whenever any uncomfortable feeling sets in, 
therefore, it means that the natural action of some 
law of progress has been obstructed or repressed 
and with continued holding suffering sets in; if 
suffering fails to arouse understanding and con- 
forming action, death, or the destruction of the 
form, takes place. 

The operation of the law of progress is accom- 
panied by much suffering only because men, women, 
families, religious teachers, societies, social groups, 
and nations have not yet learned to use the law 
instead of remaining as they do, the puppets of the 
law; that is, they become enslaved and suffer only 
because they have not learned to release life for 
the onward and upward move by breaking up its 
equipment of old shells, while at the same time 
forming new — for work requires tools, and better 
work, better tools ; and men are ultimately to reach, 
earnest, honest pursuit of better governments, with- 
out the accompaniment of warfare and suffering. 

The growing process is now painful only because 
it is compulsory, like all unfolding growth which 
men will some day learn to understand and make 
painless with co-operation. 

Ever greater interest in, better management, use 
and enjoyment of the things of life, is reached 
through the consciousness awakened by effort. 

—105— 



We have trouble with our religions^ our bodies^ 
our business^ and our neighbors^ only to the extent 
that we do not know enough to so adjust ourselves 
to our surroundings as to meet the requirements 
of continuous growth and its accompanying reve- 
lation. 

Trouble is due to the action of the iconoclastic 
feature of the progress-making principle in Nature 
in its effort to compel moves and right moves. The 
suffering hereby caused led men to infer an evil 
spirit as the explanation — the devil personification 
of primitive man. Without this devil or evil spirit 
— the iconoclastic principle — however, progress 
would be impossible. 

IngersoU inquired ''Why don't God kill the 
Devil.'*" This devil, of man was made by man in 
an effort to explain the destructive action of the 
law of progress, an action that will cease to mani- 
fest as fast as the necessity for its operation 
terminates. Men form devils and hells to explain 
and to fit their needs, their deeds, and their greeds ; 
men make devils and hells to fit their own concept; 
and ignorant men keep declaring their existence. 

New experiences are required continuously — ex- 
periences fitted, it would seem, to lure and drive 
us onward in the interest of upward growth. These 
compulsory demands of life should be viewed when 

—106— 



met^ and used as friends in disguise, and the desire 
for further expression should meet and use its op- 
portunities ; for without these compulsions, without 
this inner impetus of desire we could not improve; 
could not leave behind us old clothes, old thoughts, 
old prejudices, old politics, old religions, and old 
creeds. In fact, this cumulating burden of old 
shells and foolish notions could not be discarded 
without this desire for change, followed by smash- 
ing and suffering in cases of greed or habit-fixing 
refusal to meet its demand. 

In the social form of its manifestation there is 
every evidence that human beings are moving to- 
ward universal freedom of expression, toward de- 
mocracy, and that in consequence every man takes 
upon himself a responsibility to society of right 
use in the interest of this move; and, in proportion 
to his power of mind, of wealth, or of position to 
meet this requirement. 

The above, not being generally understood, re- 
sults in a failure to conform to its requirements, and 
explains the great trouble that often accompanies 
the suppression of ideals, the holding of immense 
wealth from use and the coercive exercise of power: 
trouble is the effort of the natural law to teach use, 
and, right use. 

When everybody has learned to live in the world 

—107— 



honestly^ without greed or f ear^ to allow and to help 
others to do the same ; learned to live^ instead of in 
the United States^ or Japan^ or Europe, or Great 
Britain, or India, or any other country, exclu- 
sively, the great peace problem will have been 
solved — the Millenium will have arrived. 

Speaking again of persons, then, have not those 
who have learned to cast off their own dead ; that is, 
to awaken themselves with new ideas, to watch, 
wait, listen and act with the wide open eyes of will 
and intelligence, in the interest of this onward move 
toward a better day, reached a very important place 
in their personal unfoldment? 

What more is old age than a concretion of preju- 
dices ? Does it not mean a soul imprisoned with the 
dead of beliefs, of habits, and of ignorance, by a 
fixity or calcined physical structure, as well as of 
thought and action ? Do we not die because we fail 
to learn how to cast off the dead gradually and 
keep plastic? 

Is there not considerable evidence that death 
solves human paradoxes, takes men out of their 
physical and mental ruts, pulls them out of the 
blind pockets, caves and cellars, into which they 
have run and from which they are not yet wise 
enough to find some way of escape, by breaking 

—108— 



down the walls^ scaling the heights^ or by retracing 
their way? 

Is not the change called deaths then^ a breaking 
away^ a wholesale smashing of the shells of ignor- 
ance^ the purpose of which is to unload and release, 
whenever the victim becomes too helpless with his 
load of foolish fixities to effect his own release? 
If not, why do we find this call for change, this 
decrease of interest in anything and everything 
accompanied by the awakening of a new interest 
that lures onward to some new pursuit. Why, in 
case of refusal to comply or failure to understand 
and comply, does trouble follow? 

May we not rationally view death as a part of 
the great law of change, working in response to 
latent possibilities seeking unfolding release, and 
beyond human knowledge and will? 

Why is it ever thus? Why are we pulled and 
driven onward continuously into these new ex- 
periences? Why do we soon tire of monotony and 
find ourselves invited, nay, almost forced by our 
feelings to seek the variety that breaks up this 
monotony? Why are we continually enticed and 
driven to advance unless there is something to go 
for? And may we not reasonably infer that the 
thing gained through pursuit of these objects is 
stored, and is a product ever increasing and always 

—109— 



much greater in amount than we are now able to 
see ? 

If the onward move of life is to continue on a 
rapidly ascending plane^ it must be furnished with, 
it must be free to use and volunteer to use, that 
variety of expression demanded by environing con- 
ditions and the pressure of life from within. 

Even to one who is but fairly able to interpret 
the meaning of external facts and of human im- 
pulse, acts and thoughts, the evidence of this is 
plainly seen in nearly all lives. 

A panoramic view illustrating this onward move 
can be had by beginning with the less evolved 
among men whom we know, and ascending in ob- 
servation from this monotonous life of small desire 
and weak expression, going onward and upward 
through the many intervening grades to that of the 
most highly evolved men and women, who, in spite 
of immense obstacles, fight their way to pinnacles 
of greatness. 

But it may be observed that though each achieve- 
ment adds one more item to the aspirant's capacity, 
this addition fails to make him feel that there is any 
less ahead to accomplish ; for in the meanwhile new 
and larger ideals have arisen and call for ex- 
pression. 

So at the end of each accomplishment, though 

—110— 



finding himself beyond where he started, it is be- 
cause the number, the intensity, and the extent 
of his desires and ambitions increase with each 
achievement — instead of growing less — that he 
never finds himself nearing the end. He will ob- 
serve, however, increase in his own power; he will 
be able to see that he can, with each achievement, 
do more and better work and enjoy the fruits with 
a keener relish. 

Herein is much evidence of an evolving per- 
sonality and the chief of the two inducements to 
keep on doing and improving. 

So it follows that from the least to the greatest 
no one seems ever quite satisfied with what he is 
doing or with what he has, however advantageous 
and enjoyable it may be, no one, perhaps, who 
does not want something else, and to achieve some- 
thing further. 

These small, immediate, tangible and conscious 
motives do not account for all of human action; in 
that realm beyond his will and knowledge man was 
set in motion by an intelligence far transcending 
his own; and we have at hand abundance of means 
from which to infer, and with a reasonable amount 
of certainty, that in the more inclusive acts of his 
life he is hereby still kept in motion, driven and 
enticed to cultivate for himself ever greater capac- 

—111— 



ity to know and to will^ that he may volunteer to 
do more and be able to enjoy more. 

What man has accomplished opens to him a wide 
vista^ and what he is now accomplishing will widen 
his view to other opportunities and larger possi- 
bilities. What he already knows of what he can 
do — the scope of his freedom to act — compels him 
to infer that his future accomplishments may^ nay, 
must, transcend our present dreams. 

From now on, socially speaking, it may mean for 
a time a greater turmoil because of the rapid pace; 
a move which, at every step of the way, is breaking 
up a cumulation of dead forms and, therefore, of 
long standing wrong; but when the wreckage is 
cleared away it means for man greater knowledge 
and increase of power over his environment. He 
is, evidently, destined to secure an increase of con- 
trol over himself, mentally, morally, and physical- 
ly, such an increase that at no very distant day 
disease, even, will be a thing of the past. 

Present achievement opens the eyes of the 
thoughtful to vistas compelling the belief that a 
much longer human life lies directly before us 
through the gradual discovery of the means of 
physical renewal. Men need, and through the 
evolution of morality and wisdom will earn, the 
right — through honest use — to have; they will de- 

—112— 



serve a longer life in which to grow character to 
achieve a larger fulfillment and higher expression 
of human desire. 

The evidence that we are moving in the direction 
of and gradually into a life that far transcends the 
present life is everywhere around us. This emer- 
gence^ having for its products ever higher forms of 
expression and greater individual happiness^ is 
one in which the speed is being continuously ac- 
celerated^ even though doubted by the superficial 
observer. 

Once more: Like the individual^ and by means 
of the same law^ human society is unfolding. But 
the process is spasmodic because it is in both cases 
largely an involuntary move; the growth is not de- 
liberate^ not planned in co-operation with the law — 
a thing which must take place before the life of any 
single individual or nation can continue for any 
great length of time without a break of form 
extinction. 

Before the life of either can be very long, men 
must not only learn deliberately, but they must use 
deliberately and intelligently as well, what they 
learn; there can be no dishonesty involved, no 
shirking the practice of what they know, without 
paying what has all the appearance of a penalty; 
and which inexorably follows. 

—113— 



How many civilizations must yet be wrecked by 
the dishonesty of ignorance^ how much suffering 
must be endured^ before men can see that the law of 
progress is a moral law with an automatic attach- 
ment of costs to pay for acts even of the least 
dishonesty? How long before men can see that 
they cannot afford to pay the price of dishonesty^ 
that the most rapid growth^ individual as well as 
social^ requires us to act up to our best every day, 
that gain of wisdom brings gain of freedom, that 
honest use of freedom brings increasing wisdom 
and increasing freedom? 

But in order to learn not to abuse freedom 
men must have freedom to abuse. They learn 
not to lie by being free to lie and suffer from its 
consequences, until in time even the illusion of the 
justifiable lie will vanish. 

Our greatest lie of today, and our most harmful 
form of dishonesty, is our failure to educate the 
rising generation as well as we know. The masses 
are not reached with our vast accumulation of edu- 
cational matter; in fact, they are denied access 
to the best of this matter by our infernal land and 
banking systems. The dead must be cast off and 
left behind. 

Whether believed or not, all this dishonesty is 
cumulating and is an indebtedness automatically 

—114 — 



charged up to the expense account of progress^ 
ultimately to be paid by the social units of indi- 
viduals. 

Most great political^ economic and religious 
changes for the better are made possible through 
human slaughter and destruction. But since pro- 
gress has been made without either^ it seems safe 
to infer that the program can thus be enlarged 
upon^ and further^ that it is due to dense mass 
ignorance that a single drop of blood comes to be 
spilled. 

Progressive changes are held back and they can 
be held back for a time by stupidity^ but at a 
fearful cost. They can not, however, be forever 
prevented from taking place. Nor does the mere 
setting up of a democratic or republican form of 
government solve the problem of bloodless change 
for the better, it simply gives the opportunity , the 
instrumentality through which to make the change. 

Rapid progress can take place only when sixty 
per cent of those who use the ballot have come to 
understand, in their unfolding aspects, history, 
economics, religions ; that they may understand the 
same thing in the move of today. Specifically, they 
must understand the economic bearing of our pres- 
ent land holding and banking systems ; before 
blood-letting progress will be no longer necessary, 

—115— 



learn to cast off the dead or to leave behind the 
no longer fitted to survive. 

Not being enlightened^ the many do not know 
how to secure for themselves justice; they fail 
to obtain a just proportion of the products of 
industry because they are unenlightened^ and by 
reason of their being deprived of the natural funds 
of their education. They know that something is 
wrong; they know that somehow they fail to obtain 
justice; and the most intelligent men know how 
and whi/j they know^ also^ that injustice breeds 
anarchists and that growing anarchy always has 
and always will destroy civilization. Men must, 
however, to a very large extent, effect their own 
freedom, and through a gain of intelligence learn 
to cast off the dead. 

The cause of the dishonesty that inflicts injustice 
is ignorance. It must not be forgotten that pro- 
gress, so far, has been largely an involuntary pro- 
cess; consequently, increase of wise conduct is but 
gradual; only slowly do men come to realize the 
responsibility which attaches to the use of power — 
political, economic, productive, distributive, re- 
ligious. 

When, in the exercise of the power of leadership, 
the nature of the responsibility involved can be 
realized, in that a trusting constituency cannot be 

—116— 



betrayed and robbed without entailing dire conse- 
quences^ that honest leadership is of equal value to 
leader and led^ the time will have arrived of a 
new day. 

The lies^ the falsities^ and the dishonesties of life 
are due to ignorance^ and the decay and extinction 
of civilizations have been due^ in all ages^ to the 
injustice hereby entailed. 

Had there during the past ages^ been nothing 
to save progress but what men knew^ each step of 
gain would have died with the nation which pro- 
duced it. And if the preservation of present gain 
of progress depended on the wisdom and honesty 
of conduct among men, it, too, would meet with the 
same fate. Were there no innate principle of 
cumulation and preservation of results back of the 
knowledge and acts of men^ progress, the soul of 
civilization^ would in each case die and pass into 
oblivion with the breaking up of its form. 

But the retention of progressive gain does not. 
evidently altogether depend on what men know, 
though the shells are left behind; that which con- 
tributes to the purpose toward which life is im- 
pulsed to move, the ideals which make for a larger 
and happier humanity, are automatically preserved ; 
and, in spite of human folly and stupidity, are 

—117— 



passed on beyond the death of its form by each 
civilization to its successor. 

And, may it not be possible, that this gain has 
been, in part at least, brought on down through 
the instrumentality of the individuals who took part 
in the building of former civilizations, that return- 
ing with the stored results in themselves they are 
able to unconsciously contribute their gain to suc- 
ceeding civilizations personally? 

Anyhow — though the fact is not commonly rec- 
ognized — each national form on becoming extinct, 
hds been succeeded by one slightly higher in kind, 
and each appears and is animated, very largely by 
that which somehow has been automatically re- 
tained, that gain which the natural law does not 
allow the dishonesty and ignorance of men to de- 
stroy. 

When enough has been learned to keep the forms 
through which life manifests sufficiently plastic 
with change of parts to meet the requirements of 
progressive growth, may not progress continue 
without break .^ This, however, requires intelli- 
gence of a far higher order than has yet been 
reached and operated in any civilization of the 
past. 

All social and national turmoils and upheavals, 
like the recently closed war in Europe, mean the 

—118— 



destruction of old forms, but this safety valve 
of periodic destruction failed to save the civiliza- 
tion of past ages from final destruction. Has 
progress so far advanced as to produce men suflS- 
ciently wise and free from selfish interests to save 
present gain by replacing old forms with new? 
That they did not in past ages learn to do so 
explains the decay of empires and extinct civiliza- 
tions. 

Does not about the same thing happen to the 
individual when he casts off the form which can 
no longer serve the requirements of his growth? 
In the case of both — of the individual and of his 
society — will not the time of life be lengthened to 
the extent that, through gradual increase of in- 
telligence, the way to preserve the plasticity of the 
form with rebuilding change is learned? 

For each civilization buils for itself a specific 
form that, once destroyed, never again, so far as 
we can see, appears — one that very evidently never 
repeats itself — each, in its turn, is particular, is 
another civilization, one in which there is more 
personal freedom, more democracy, more wise men, 
more of mutual understanding, more honesty; each 
is found to be better equipped for action. But, does 
not the same thing hold true of the individual? 
Nature seems to be driving and coaxing us through 

—119— 



schools of lower grades into schools of higher 
grades. 

We are all^ evidently, merely children, and these 
things of life with which we have to do and over 
which we work so seriously are but our toys, by 
the means of which we are drawn and driven into 
the experieneces which, if properly used, will carry 
us onward to a larger measure and higher quality 
of individual attainment and expression, and 
sequentially, into rewards of merit that, out in the 
distance, are far too great for our present under- 
standing. 

Life furnishes an abundance of toys, material 
for today's practice — much more than can be either 
used or understood — to cultivate in us the larger 
understanding and use that will be ours on the 
morrow; tomorrow a new supply from which to 
select, will be found, to continue the building; and 
in the onward move a new supply will always be 
available for the building of our stairways. At 
present, we nearly all seem to be at work on the 
basement of our structure of personality. 

It is here, evidently, in this work on founda- 
tions that we are driven to cultivate knowledge 
and will, to evolve judgment, to learn to reason, 
to discriminate, to sort, to select objective things 
for classification and, for the increase of the con- 

—120— 



sciousness it gives. But we are led by much to 
suspect that we fail to realize all we accomplish, 
that a large part, if not the larger part of our 
building, takes place behind the scenes, and here 
becomes automatically conserved — stored in that 
realm, the things of which, to our present senses, 
have no tangibility. 

Whatever the purpose may be, it is plain to be 
seen that all life is being enticed and driven to 
improve and build for itself ever higher forms of 
material expression. Human beings are included 
in this process. At first enticed and driven onward 
and upward like the lower animals, they gradually 
learn the art of voluntary conduct, then the har- 
mony-making of honest conduct, of bringing an ever 
greater sphere of life's expression within the un- 
derstanding and under the control of the will. Men 
learn their possibilities through experience and to 
embody this knowledge in education, thus shorten- 
ing the road to learning. 

In this move forward there is an evident purpose, 
and the natural inference is, from the abundance of 
evidence at hand, that it is moving, not only the 
human family, but the individual, forward, and, 
equipped with continuous and continuously improv- 
ing personality, onward and upward into a life of 
higher expression and enjoyment. 

—121— 



One of the great lessons of life^ probably the 
greatest^ is the one of easting off the dead in the 
interest of a rebuilding and progressive change. 



—122— 



WHAT, THEN, MATTERS DESTRUCTION? 

XN THE activities, then, which make up the 
programs of human life and progress, many 
mistakes are inevitable; so, also, does it hold of 
deliberate wrong. For we find ourselves in an en- 
vironment and a state of ignorance in which we 
are compelled to guess out things for ourselves. 

And if the object of making the way difficult is 
not to make men larger and stronger it is the result. 
Hence, gradually strengthened by the struggle, we 
grow correspondingly better able also to discrimi- 
nate and to discard the becoming unfitted to serve 
at the right time, and, with the change, to destroy 
less of that which is still of value. 

How much, then, does destruction matter, how 
fast can men learn ? The facts of life as they pass 
on before us seem to show that life is a term of 
practice, a term of school, if you prefer; the world 
a laboratory, a place to make mistakes and then 
to correct them, a place to make things, to use 
them for a while, then to break them up and make 
better things. 

To what extent, then, does it matter that in being 
driven by desires and needs to act, and by torture 
to think and to act ever more deliberately, men 
perform with a great deal of foolishness.^ 

—123— 



What if in passing through their educational 
grind much that now seems to us of value comes 
to be destroyed; what if farms are overrun^ build- 
ings and cities battered down; how in the present 
stage of progress^ in which can be seen so much 
human ignorance^ can it be otherwise; how else 
can man learn? And what if^ in that realm beyond 
human control^ the purpose of which we know 
not^ even continents, worlds, and systems are crum- 
bled to dust in the evolving grind? 

Is it not evident that all the appurtenances with- 
in reach of the human senses are merely external 
forms, the visible expressions of life and intelli- 
gence in matter — simply training school appurte- 
nances? Is there anything permanent herein? 
Very evidently not. 

But that the life manifesting through these forms 
escapes destruction, and with its gain of personality 
and intelligence continues, seems more than a mere 
assumption, for it rests upon a foundation of ra- 
tionality, plus the discoveries of investigators that 
add to its firmness. 

Living is one eternal mutability; destruction as 
well as construction is legitimate; all this material 
is practice material and is worked over by life 
(a part of which is human life) countless millions 
of times. 

—124— 



Man is evidently here to act, to fashion as best 
he may, to then see the imperfection of his work, 
feel dissatisfied, break it up and refashion. It be- 
comes legitimate, then, to cut, to hew, to mutilate, 
and destroy, as well as to build. 

This matter worked over by man again and 
again is, evidently, the material of his education, his 
kindergarten equipment — that with which, in the 
practice, he builds of himself a higher product of 
Nature than that with which he works. 

Those who fail to see the working of the law 
look upon this tremendous ferment of growth as a 
disease, and the term they use to describe it is 
"rotten.** 7* it rotten? Why not view this great 
turmoil now on and before us as due to the breaking 
up of old forms — forms of government, society and 
church, the slufEng off of shells, the discarding of 
the obsolete, or unfitted longer to serve; and, also, 
as a preparation for the building of the new } 

Progress is co?istructive, but it is, also constructive. 
Must not Nature have, to build her new forms, the 
material of the disintegrated old; and must she not, 
also, have room for the fashioning of the new? 
Is not the accelerated motion of change entirely a 
product of ideas widely distributed through the 
printing press? Does it not mean a mental awak- 
ening in the mass — a new birth? 

—125— 



Life^ when thus viewed^ better enables us to un- 
derstand and account for war. How are you ex- 
plaining this fact of war? Through what set of 
cause- factors does war become possible? Why do 
men allow themselves to be persuaded by a few 
leaders, who actually know but little, to take sides, 
to be enticed and coerced into great opposing 
armies, then to meet and slaughter each other, when 
they, as units of these opposed masses, have noth- 
ing whatever against each other ? To say that they 
are not united is no explanation; why are they not 
united? Why do they allow systems to exist and 
persist in which such things are possible? 

Persons of much feeling view war as a terrible 
mistake, a great foolishness; and does it not seem 
that they are right? 

But another view of this matter may be taken; 
is it not, also, the way men take to learn better, 
the way out of their foolishness? 

There must be some way of explaining why they 
do this when the facts are before us showing the 
educational way of improvement to be so much the 
better. 

Can there be any explanation, other than that 
man is more than a body, and that this more needs 
a drastic, educational experience which it would not 
voluntarily take, and could not take singly? Can 

—126— 



this body, judging by the way men are driven into 
its reckless sacrifice, be of so very much more 
importance than the clothing with which it is 
covered ? 

If the product of the individual's life action, con- 
stituting his enlarged intelligeence, what he learns 
in life, be taken forward from one embodiment to 
another — briefly stated, if personality be re-em- 
bodied as claimed by Theosophists and some others 
— is not this product of experience, constituting 
personality, not only of more importance than this 
present visible form, but that for which this form 
exists and acts ? Only when this visible form, then, 
has served its school term of experience, or the pur- 
pose for which it was taken on, by having added to 
the unfoldment of the personality all it can, does it 
die, disintegrate, and pass from view. If this be 
not true, will you, reader, give to these facts, ever 
before us, a more rational explanation? 

Can it be other than that the thing for which men 
declare war — the avoxved human purpose — is but an 
illusion through which they are made to act in order 
to gain a product from the experienece of this 
action that is much greater than the avowed pur- 
pose, greater than what they can yet see and 
know? 

If this be true, then, a fact, there is no such 

—127 — 



thing in Nature as sacrifice; except in the seeming; 
all this that seems like sacrifice is but the laying 
aside of a poorer thing for a better thing — the 
sacrifice^ if you prefer^ of growth^ of a continuous 
rebirth. 

This life^ therefore^ that we^ as a rule^ view so 
pessimistically^ for the reason that it seems to a 
short sight unjust and orderless term of strife is 
not what to us it seems. With the above rea- 
sonings life takes on order^ has an evident purpose^ 
is a thing that gives to the individual a larger 
justice than we have been giving it credit for 
doings a justice that is even greater than we have 
yet been able to dream. 

When we take this life to be the evolutionary, 
activity of the Cosmic mind^ invisibly behind and 
working through visible forms^ pushing life on up 
into conscious action and man into both conscious 
and intelligent action^ and doing this on a plan 
that lies so infinitely beyond the finite or human 
comprehension that it cannot be imagined, it is an 
inference having, in the facts of life, the support of 
a very strong line of evidence. If we look into 
this matter of life — through the sciences in par- 
ticular — view it dispassionately, with earnestness 
and honesty, we can see that this Cosmic mind is 
evidently large enough to be trusted. 

—128— 



To drop once more^ then, into this every day life : 
there must be in the work that a man does to earn 
his wages more than wages, though while he is 
earning them the wages are all that he can see. 

Nor is he, naturally, ever satisfied with his 
wages and what they will bring; he is not yet far 
enough up the ladder of consciousness to see the 
more that he is getting than his wages. If man is 
to progress he must never become quite comfortable 
— this is difficult to see. 

Smallness of concept is the thing that in differing 
degrees trammels the outlook of all; we are yet 
living down on the plane where our eyes are filled 
with tears and dust, and our senses dulled with the 
sewer gasses of life. 

In other words, we are immersed in, annoyed 
and blinded by selfishness and this ferment of 
progress. Life means to many a place to get all 
of selfish sense indulgence they can with as little 
effort as possible, without any great amount of 
scrupulousness as to the means used. 

Life means to a far less number an opportunity 
for experience, the product of which cumulates and 
persits for many experiences ; it means the set- 
ting up of causes the effects of which are not lost, 
but somehow stored and taken along from life 
to life. 

—129 — 



This friction of life^ this social turmoil^ they take 
to be but the activity of growth — a growth that 
is carrying us all onward and upward into a larger, 
a higher, and a brighter life of expression. 

Men and women are limited much less in their 
possibilities and opportunities than by their lack 
of knowledge and energy — he can do more and 
know more who will. We are limited by our stub- 
born prejudices and our foolish beliefs, by a small 
sphere of consciousness, a sphere that can be and 
should be enlarged with effort, step by step with 
work; there are greater possibilities in voluntary 
education than we yet know. ''The price of a better 
thing is the sacrifice of a poorer thing,'* the com- 
pensation for suffering is the lesson hereby learned. 

Dissatisfaction is not a matter of human perver- 
sity; most men are altogether to well satisfied; dis- 
satisfaction with existing conditions increases with 
awakening and is what keeps men from stopping 
entirely. Why not listen? There is, implanted 
within each, a desire to know more and to do more ; 
a desire to act with ever greater accuracy, with 
greater ease and comfort and to enj oy more. 

Justice to man from his Creator who implanted 
this desire demands that this desire-prophecy be 
fulfilled. In fact. Nature seems to be awakening 
man to understand that every legitimate desire of 

—130— 



his shall be personally gratified as fast as he can 
gain the knowledge and will to act, to earn the 
means and cultivate the capacity to receive. Nor 
shall the portion of the individual's work that 
goes to the race be taken at the expense of the 
individual — there is much evidence that the great 
plan neither eliminates nor neglects the individual. 
Why, in justice, should we reap the harvest of the 
seed sowing of the ages behind us, unless we took 
part in that sowing.'^ 

Any philosophy of life founded on the theory 
that Nature uses and sacrifices the individual to 
build a higher race cannot be a sound one ; this can- 
not be the fact of the great plan; for, if the evi- 
dence before us has any value, a race or a society is 
merely an instrumentality evolved by, made up of, 
and for the use of, the personalities of which it is 
composed. 

If it be but a theory that the individual is des- 
tined to survive beyond physical death and to be 
what he hopes and strives to be, and that his 
society shall unfold to this end, and keep meeting 
the expectation of his ideals, it is a theory strongly 
fortified by evidence — it certainly is a rational 
view and the only way we can now see to give 
justice. There should be no sacrifice in this great 
Cosmic plan except in the seeming, only as it ap- 

—131— 



pears so to a short sight; and this appearance is 
inevitable — how could it be otherwise? 

If there be^ herein^ a sacrifice^ can the power 
which planned it and set up human hope be either 
omnipotent or as wise and as just as man? 

What^ then, seems to be a sacrifice on the part 
of the individual is, evidently, merely the destruc- 
tion of forms necessitated by the law of progressive 
change; and, the accompanying action, the working 
of a process engaged in putting away an invisible 
product for the individual's future use. Must not 
this be the conclusion of any sound or well rounded 
and completed philosophy of life? 

It has been demonstrated that many different 
grades or planes of matter do exist but one of 
which is tangible to the human senses. We know 
that this present experience gives to the individual 
a product of enlarged intelligence. What becomes 
of this product ? Is it not sane to infer from what 
we know that the ego or personality passes out 
with the cumulated product of its work into another 
environment of action; and, here in its next stage 
of unfoldment takes on an embodiment fitted to 
serve a higher work and larger growth. 

If, then, the above be true, life becomes some- 
what understandable. What other hypothesis can 
be established by which honesty of creative purpose 

—132— 



can be claimed^ and the facts of life be explained 
with any considerable degree of satisfaction? 

The variety and the change of this life entertains 
and thus keeps up human interest; this law of 
change that resides in life^ in force^ and in matter^ 
builds into ever greater complexity of structure 
higher instruments of life's expression in every- 
thing; and this moves cumulatively on from one 
plane of experience to another in a series of 
graduations. 

If this be not true, what is the use of learning 
anything? And, tell us, what can be the meaning 
of life? 

If many, as they undoubtedly do, fail to see 
that the individual life emerges from the death 
of this body, is it not because they are not suffi- 
ciently awakened to make an effort to secure the 
available information in proof of such emergence? 

And does not this go far to explain why so many 
are found engaged in the self-destruction of trying 
to crowd the sensual pleasures of a thousand lives 
into this one short existence? Does not this suggest 
the why of our hurried and uncomfortable condi- 
tion, our selfishness and dishonesty ? 

THE END. 

—133— 



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